Herodias mutilating the severed head of Saint John the Baptist held by Salome. Oil painting attributed to Pieter de Grebber.

  • Grebber, Pieter de, approximately 1600-1652 or 1653.
Date:
[between 1640 and 1649?]
Reference:
44824i
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view Herodias mutilating the severed head of Saint John the Baptist held by Salome. Oil painting attributed to Pieter de Grebber.

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Credit

Herodias mutilating the severed head of Saint John the Baptist held by Salome. Oil painting attributed to Pieter de Grebber. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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About this work

Description

Biblical background: according to Saint Luke's gospel in the New Testament of the Bible, Saint John the Baptist was the cousin of Jesus Christ and announced Christ's coming. He was imprisoned by Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee, for speaking out in public against the morality of Herod Antipas's marriage to Herodias, the former wife of his half-brother Herod Philip. Herodias persuaded her daughter (unnamed in the gospel but traditionally called Salome) to ask her step-father and uncle Herod to give her the head of John the Baptist on a platter, which Herod reluctantly did. As John had foretold, Herod's marriage to Herodias brought his kingdom to destruction through a war against his ex-father-in-law, Aretas IV Philopatris, King of Nabataea, centered on present day Jordan. Herod is said to have retired to France and ended his days in Lyons

Salome holds the severed head of the Baptist while Herodias pierces his tongue with a pin. This rare subject is derived from a sentence of St Jerome's Apologia adversus Rufinum, in which it is adduced as an example of the too-late suppression of the truth. The painting is an example of curious methods of torture and execution (one of the original subjects specified for inclusion in the Wellcome collections), and of the abuse of body-parts

Publication/Creation

[between 1640 and 1649?]

Physical description

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas 116.9 x 93.5 cm

References note

R. Verstegen, 'Van een ketter wordt de tong doorstoken. Van Johannes de Doper ook. Beteugeling van "de nieuwe religie" te Nieuwpoort rond 1570', Fundamina, 2014, 20: 993-1005

Reference

Wellcome Collection 44824i

Creator/production credits

Attributed to Pieter de Grebber by Peter Sutton. De Grebber (ca. 1600-1652 or 1653) worked in Haarlem and tended to paint recondite subjects. However, de Grebber normally signed his works with a monogram on the top left corner and Sutton was surprised that the work is not signed. Sutton stated that there are similarities in this work with that of the Flemish artist Jordaens but also in part with de Grebber's later style - in his use of the grey ground to suggest the modelling. However, Sutton also pointed out that the use of bright red was not common to de Grebber's later works. Salomon de Bray could also be considered as the possible painter

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