The Baptism of Christ

Nicolas Poussin

National Gallery of Art

Twelve people and one child stand, sit, or kneel along a riverbank in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or tanned skin, and are muscular. They are in various stages of undress, wearing robes of golden yellow, ruby red, petal pink, azure blue, or cream white. To our right of center, a man, Jesus, stands facing us with his arms crossed over his chest. He wears a blue robe wrapped loosely across his shoulders and across his hips. He looks down, his blond hair falling alongside his face, as another man, wearing red, pours water from a shallow dish onto his head. A white dove flies with wings spread overhead. To our right of Jesus, one kneeling person wearing white holds up Jesus’s blue robes and another looks on, wearing a sage green robe and holding a voluminous rose-pink cloth. To our left, a group of five men react by throwing up hands, pointing upward, or looking up. One man with a gray beard and hair stands and bows his head over praying hands. A young boy wraps the arm we can see across the praying man's hips. Three more men to the left of this group pause as they undress to look toward Jesus. All the men stand or sit among puddles as a river spans the width of the painting behind the group and winds into the distance to our right. At the center of the composition, three men stand or recline on a grassy mound on the far side of the river. Tucked under trees at the peak of the mound, a smudge of white could be another kneeling person. Two more people walk along a path that crests the mound to our left. Mountains in the distance are slate blue beneath a vivid blue sky streaked with white clouds.