Head of Saint John the Baptist (c. 1550–1650): Art, History and Details

Head of Saint John the Baptist (c. 1550–1650) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Salome’s dancing so pleased her stepfather Herod that he offered her anything she wanted. Her mother advised Salome to demand John the Baptist’s head, which Salome presented to her family in an elaborate dish. Here, the head stands on its own, with a startlingly tangible presence. Despite its biblical source, this work was meant for a domestic setting, whose owner would have admired the artful presentation of a shocking story. Acquired in 1953 as the work of the Venetian Renaissance artist Titian, the painting soon lost this attribution because it lacks Titian’s distinctive brushwork. After decades of research, the museum has yet to identify a clear author. Recently, several scholars have argued persuasively for a Spanish artist, partly because the subject is common in Spanish art in the early 1600s. Yet the color scheme and the handling of paint in the face recalls the work of earlier artists inspired by Titian in northern Italy.

Object facts

• Title: Head of Saint John the Baptist
• Date: c. 1550–1650
• Culture: Spain or Northern Italy, mid 16th - mid 17th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 80.6 x 104.8 x 7.6 cm (31 3/4 x 41 1/4 x 3 in.); Unframed: 50 x 75.2 cm (19 11/16 x 29 5/8 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1953.424

A detail from the museum

The scroll wrapped around the cross next to John the Baptist's head reads Ecce Agnus Dei, meaning "Behold the Lamb of God."

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry Sayles. Venetian Tradition: Catalogue of the Exhibition. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1956.
• Francis, Henry. "Portraits by Lorenzo Lotto." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 44, no. 3 (March 1957): 43-46. Attributed to Lorenzo Lotto
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.