施洗约翰传道

Rembrandt made this around 1634, soon after moving to Amsterdam and marrying Saskia, when commissions were pouring in. It is painted almost entirely in shades of brown, a grisaille, probably worked up as a design he could later turn into a print. John the Baptist stands mid-sermon with an arm flung up, but the real subject is the crowd, roughly a hundred people packed around him, and Rembrandt gives each a different response: rapt, bored, arguing, a child playing in the dirt, a dog. He sets turbaned and foreign-looking figures at the edges to suggest the whole world listening. Years later he fitted the little panel into a painted frame of his own, crowded with still more figures.