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Herodias with the Head of Saint John the Baptist
Herodias with the Head of Saint John the Baptist

Herodias with the Head of Saint John the Baptist

Francesco del Cairo (Italian (Lombardy), 1598–1674)
about 1625–30
Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas
Dimensions119.4 x 95.3 cm (47 x 37 1/2 in.)
Credit LineWilliam Sturgis Bigelow Collection
Accession number26.772
On View
On view
ClassificationsPaintings
Description
Herodias was enraged with John the Baptist for preaching against her marriage to Herod, the brother of her first husband. According to the New Testament, she instructed her daughter Salome to ask Herod for the Baptist's head as a reward for her dancing. A text by Saint Jerome recounts that when Herodias received the severed head, she pierced the Baptist's tongue with a needle. In this painting, Cairo made the macabre subject even more disturbing through dramatic lighting and the vivid realism with which he portrayed Herodias swooning in ecstasy as she mutilates the tongue that spoke against her.
ProvenanceLouis Philippe (b. 1773 - d. 1850), King of the French. By 1853, Henry Jacob Bigelow (b. 1818 - d. 1890), Boston [see note 1]; by descent to his son, William Sturgis Bigelow (b. 1850 - d. 1926), Boston; 1926, bequest of William Sturgis Bigelow to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 20, 1926)

NOTES:
[1] In 1853, Bigelow lent this painting to the Boston Athenaeum, where it was exhibited as a work by Caravaggio.