O Batismo de Cristo

When Joachim Patinir was working in Antwerp around 1515, no European painter was yet known simply as a landscape man. Patinir became the first. In this panel the actual subject, John baptising Christ in the Jordan while God the Father and a dove appear above, is pushed into the foreground, and behind it opens a vast rolling world of blue-green hills, winding rivers and tiny far-off towns. If you look past Christ you can spot John preaching again in the middle distance, with Christ listening from the crowd, still wearing the blue robe he has set aside in front. Patinir sold this kind of expansive backdrop so well that other painters began hiring him just to paint the world behind their figures. Dürer, who met him, called him the good landscape painter.