Saint John Baptizing the People
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
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About this painting
It is not Christ under John's hand. Luke's order: the people first, Jesus also. They wear antique costume, arranged, in the Getty's words, into a carefully balanced frieze. A sacrament staged in the grammar of the world it replaced.
The costume is the patron. Cassiano dal Pozzo commissioned it, and the Seven Sacraments he ordered from Poussin aimed at archaeological accuracy. A kneeling man drags his shirt over his head, a figure Anthony Blunt traced to Piero della Francesca's Baptism.
Dal Pozzo's paper museum recorded antiquities and costume across some ten thousand sheets. Poussin walked it into the Jordan.
Sources: J. Paul Getty Museum, object 71.PA.58 · J. Paul Getty Museum text, Google Arts & Culture partner page · Royal Collection Trust, 'The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo' · National Gallery, London, press release on acquiring Poussin's 'Eucharist' · Luke 3:21, New American Bible (Revised Edition), USCCB · Craig Burnett, 'Stripped back – how a figure freed up Poussin's painting', Apollo, 26 September 2022
Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptized, that Jesus also being baptized and praying, heaven was opened.
Luke 3:21 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 9,378 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.