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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Pier Francesco Mola

Saint John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert

ca. 1650 - 1655
Oil on canvas.
73.5 x 99 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
287
(
1983.26
)
Room 6
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Pier Francesco Mola moved to Rome with his family in 1616. Little is known about his initial training but it is thought that he made two trips to the north of Italy, the first between 1633 and 1640 and the second between 1641 and 1647, with the intention of completing his studies as a painter. Mola was taught by Francesco Albani, and from a letter by that painter of 1658 we know that Mola was in his studio in Bologna for two years. Albani is the source for the present painting of Saint John the Baptist preaching in the Desert. Mola’s time with Albani is recorded by Passeri in his biography of Mola, who noted that the period in question took place during Mola’s second trip to northern Italy. A fine draughtsman, Mola worked in fresco and easel painting, acquiring fame and renown from around the mid-century, at which date he began an important series of commissions to decorate illustrious villas and palaces. His compositions, use of colour and approach to the figure all reveal the influence of Venetian painting.

This episode from the life of Saint John the Baptist, who can be recognised by his clothes and the lamb grazing peacefully next to him, is recounted in the Gospels. According to Saint Matthew, John preached in the desert of Judea, wearing a hair shirt tied at the waist with a leather belt. Crowds came to hear him from Jerusalem, Judea and the region around the Jordan, and John baptised them and heard their confessions. Mola converted the desert landscape into a green setting in which a crowd is seated at the foot of a mountain. The crowd surrounds the Baptist who holds his cane cross and points to the sky.

With regard to its composition, the painting can be compared with a canvas by Francesco Albani of the 1640s that also depicts John the Baptist preaching in the desert (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon). Albani locates the saint in an area of trees in the same corner as in the present canvas and surrounded by a listening crowd, both seated and standing. Mola, however, brings the figures much closer to the foreground planes, most notably that of Saint John. He also includes a rider whose equivalent place in Albani’s canvas is occupied by an old man leaning on a staff. Various preparatory drawings have been related to the present canvas, all including Saint John seated on the left among trees and talking to a crowd of figures arranged in a variety of poses. The most important among these drawings are the two in the Musée du Louvre and the one in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich.

Mola depicted this subject on other occasions, for example the painting in the National Gallery, London, which has less figures but includes that of Christ, and the one in the Louvre, in which Saint John points out Christ to a compact group of figures including a knight in armour.

Mar Borobia
17th Century17th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Saint John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert. San Juan Bautista predicando en el desierto, c. 1650-1655
Saint John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert
Pier Francesco Mola

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Saint John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert. San Juan Bautista predicando en el desierto, c. 1650-1655
Saint John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert
Pier Francesco Mola

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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