The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist

According to the Louvre, this canvas was begun for the Jesuits in Rome. It seems never to have reached them. In 1685 it was bought for Louis XIV for 1,000 livres, and that purchase is also the only firm date the picture has, so it was painted by then. Ten years later it hung above the fireplace of the Salle des Seigneurs at the Trianon, in the grounds of Versailles, and was then moved to the entrance hall.

John the Baptist stands on a rock in a red mantle and points upward, and the crowd that has come out to the wilderness to hear him spreads out below in the landscape. The picture's travels did not stop at Versailles. In 1811 the state sent it to the museum in Dijon, and there it stayed until 1968. It came back to the Louvre that year in an exchange, and what went to Dijon in its place was a Calvary from the Charterhouse of Champmol, the monastery outside Dijon where the dukes of Burgundy were buried.