John the Baptist of John arrested, executed, and buried in a tomb as a conscious foreshadowing of the fate of Jesus. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, "Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'" John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their
St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness been made for St. John's Cathedral, 's-Hertogenbosch. The painting is difficult to date. If the 's-Hertogenbosch hypothesis is correct, the date would be around 1489, although later dates have been proposed based on other criteria. John the Baptist is often depicted with a lamb. The animal is said to symbolise the sacrifice of the saint as an innocent victim of the wickedness of mankind, or it could be that the saint is pointing towards Jesus Christ, whose symbol is the pascal lamb (John 1:29–36). Bosch's painting differs from other paintings of John the Baptist in the fantastical objects he carefully