Tag: art

Juan de Flandes, Herodias’ Revenge, 1496
At a party Herod promises the daughter of his new wife that she can have whatever she desires. Her mother Herodias tells her to demand the head of John the Baptist, the man who heavily criticized her marriage to Herod and who happened to be in the palace jail. Reluctantly Herod orders the beheading of John.

Here the daughter shows the head to Herod and Herodias. Herodias holds a knife, perhaps ready to cut John’s tongue. The tongue nor the name of the daughter are mentioned in the Bible. Other sources suggest the daughter’s name was Salome.

This oak panel was part of an altarpiece devoted to the life of St. John. The remainders of the polyptych are scattered over several museums. Juan de Flandes painted it in commission for the Spanish queen Isabella. It was meant for the convent of Miraflores, near Burgos. In 1809 a French general in Napoleon’s army took it to France. The Belgian collector Fritz Mayer van den Bergh bought it in 1899. At the time it was attributed to Lucas van Leyden.

Jean Benner’s painting of Salome with the head of John the Baptist (1899)
Salome, the Daughter of Herodias (c. AD 14 – between 62 and 71), is known from the New Testament (Mark 6:17-29 and Matthew 14:3-11, where, however, her name is not given). Another source from Antiquity, Flavius Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, gives her name and some detail about her family relations.

Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness, notably in regard to the dance mentioned in the New Testament, which is thought to have had an erotic element to it, and in some later transformations it has further been iconized as the Dance of the Seven Veils. Other elements of Christian tradition concentrate on her lighthearted and cold foolishness that, according to the gospels, led to John the Baptist’s death.

A new motif was added by Oscar Wilde in his Salome, in which she plays the role of femme fatale. This last interpretation, made even more memorable by Richard Strauss’ opera based on Wilde’s work, is not consistent with Josephus’ account; according to the Romanized Jewish historian, Salome lived long enough to marry twice and raise several children. Few literary accounts elaborate the biographical data given by Josephus.

According to Mark 6:21-29 (Salome is not mentioned by name in this passage so reference is incomplete), Salome was the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas. Salome danced before Herod and her mother Herodias at the occasion of his birthday, and in doing so gave her mother the opportunity to obtain the head of John the Baptist. According to Mark’s gospel Herodias bore a grudge against John for stating that Herod’s marriage to her was unlawful; she encouraged Salome to demand that John be executed.