A Thousand Words
John the Baptist by Anton Raphael Mengs
by Mary Elizabeth Podles
"Behold, I send my prophet before your face." This is not a conventional, benevolent, smiling St. John the Baptist, pointing benignly upward in gentle reminder. This is a full-blown wild man, up close to the picture plane and in your face, as befits a prophet. His message is clear, urgent, and compelling: Repent! This John sits on a rock, and behind him a cliff face signifying the wilderness pushes him further forward into our faces.
At the lower right, a reed, shaken by the wind, makes reference to Jesus' gently ironic, "What did you come out to see?" At the left, John's staff, a foreshadowing of Christ's cross, leans against the remains of a dead tree. This is the Stump of Jesse, "from which shall come a shoot" that is Jesus. And while John is wearing his customary camel's hair clothing, a billowing red cloak foretells his own martyrdom at the hands of Herod.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on art from the online archives
32.4—July/August 2019
on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello
33.2—March/April 2020
An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward
more from the online archives
36.1—Jan/Feb 2023
A History of the Protestant Debate over Contraception by James A. Altena
19.4—May 2006
The Culture War Is Between Religious Believers on Both Sides by Howard P. Kainz
30.2—March/April 2017
Our Path to Holiness Runs Straight Through Calvary by Robin Phillips
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
