Landscape with the Baptism of Christ and the Road to Emmaus

Two moments the Gospels keep far apart share this one landscape. Somewhere in it John baptises Christ in the river Jordan, the scene that opens his public life. Elsewhere two disciples walk to the village of Emmaus on the evening of the Resurrection, beside a stranger they will recognise only at supper. Herri met de Bles keeps both groups small and gives the rest of the panel to the country around them.

Pictures like this did well south of the Alps. The museum says the Flemish painter worked in Italy in the last part of his life, and that his clear, deep landscapes peopled with minute figures had enormous success there and left a strong mark on Italian painters. Collections in 16th-century Verona held many of them. This one belonged to Giulio Pompei, a Veronese collector whose pictures came to the city's museum in the 1850s.