Salome is an oil painting, probably of Salome with the head of John the Baptist, by the Italian late Renaissance painter Titian. It is usually dated to around 1515 and is now in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery in Rome. Like other paintings of this subject, it has sometimes been considered to represent Judith with the Head of Holofernes, the other biblical incident found in art showing a female and a severed male head . Historically, the main figure has also been called Herodias, the mother of Salome.
Sometimes attributed to Giorgione, the painting is now usually seen as one where Titian's personal style can be seen in development, with a "sense of physical proximity and involvement of the viewer", in which "expert handling of the malleable oil medium enabled the artist to evoke the sensation of softly spun hair upon creamy flesh".
Erwin Panofsky suggested the head of John the Baptist might be a self-portrait, and it is possible that Titian was alluding to his private life with the model, anticipating Cristofano Allori's, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1613, Royal Collection, and other versions), where the severed head was a self-portrait and Judith and the maid portraits of his ex-mistress and her mother. The model here, allowing for a degree of idealization, has been said to be the same used in the Dresden Venus (Giorgione and Titian, c. 1510).
This composition was copied many times, in some cases at least by Titian's workshop.
The possible provenance of the painting begins in 1533, with a Judith by Titian recorded in the collection of Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, a very important patron of Titian. No other surviving Titian painting seems to fit this record, so if it is not the painting now in Rome, it must be lost. In 1592 Duke Alfonso's grand-daughter, Lucrezia d'Este (1535–1598) owned a painting described as a "Herodias" (Salome's mother). What is certainly the Doria Pamphilj painting belonged by 1603 to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini before passing to his niece Olimpia Aldobrandini, whose second husband was the ex-cardinal Camillo Pamphilj; since then it has passed by descent through the family. In the 18th century the painting was called a Herodias, but a number of foreign visitors who saw it record thinking the main figure to be Judith.
If the painting's main figure was Herodias, traditionally seen as the prime mover of the conspiracy to get John the Baptist executed, the younger woman next to her would be intended to represent her daughter Salome, here shown as a figure in thrall to her more glamourous mother. The identification as Herodias seems to have no recent supporters, but that as Judith does.
A medieval addition to the Salome legend held that, as well as her mother's hatred of John for his preaching against her, Salome was also motivated by a frustrated love for John, to which the cupid might refer. Her face is turned away from his head, but her eyes look back to it. Panofsky describes her as: "Meditative, sad and a little benumbed, she seems to recoil from the face of St. John which yet attracts her sidelong glances with irresistible force". Meanwhile, the maid "looks at the heroine with the eyes of a faithful dog who feels and shares his master's distress without comprehending its cause". Thus, in the pyramidal group of figures, the glances flow from the maid on the left, up to Salome at centre, and down to John at right, whose dead eyes are closed.
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