Landscape with Saint John the Baptist

Also known as: Landscape with Saint John the Baptist Preaching

About the Artwork

This picture is an example of the so-called world landscape, a term coined by art historians to characterize a type of Northern landscape painting with a vast panorama and a narrative religious subject in the foreground. This type of landscape, popularized by the Flemish painter Joachim Patinir (about 1485-1524), was fashionable throughout the 16th century. Bles placed the group of exotically dressed figures on a piece of land overlooking a great panorama of mountains, coast, and sea. The view of the harbor city is purely imaginative, and the fanciful cliffs and mountain peaks that crowd the distance seem to disappear into a light mist. This manner of creating depth in the landscape, called the atmospheric or aerial perspective, was an invention of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Bles was acclaimed in Italy as the Master of the Owl (il Civetta), after the bird he often put into his works. In this scene, the owl is situated on the rock in the lower-right foreground.

Inscriptions

signed with owl sitting on rock in lower right foreground.

Exhibition history

Year in Review: 1967. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 29-December 31, 1967). Dutch Art and Life in the Seventeenth Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 10-September 2, 1973). Visions of Landscape: East and West. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982). Flemish Landscapes, 1520-1700. Kulturstiftung Ruhr Essen, Germany (August 23-November 30, 2003); Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Wien, Austria (organizer) (December 21, 2003-April 12, 2004).

Quick Overview

Artist: Herri met de Bles (Flemish, 1510–1572)
Date: c. 1540
Medium: oil on wood
Dimensions: Framed: 43.2 x 54.9 x 6.4 cm (17 x 21 5/8 x 2 1/2 in.); Unframed: 30.5 x 42.3 cm (12 x 16 5/8 in.)
Type: Painting
Classification: Painting
Department: European Painting and Sculpture
Credit line: Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
Accession no.: 1967.20

Provenance

Private collection, Cumberland, England; [Herbert Bier, London], sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.

Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.