Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist (1500s or later): Art, History and Details

Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist (1500s or later) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bernardino Luini (Italian, c. 1480-c. 1532).

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 on an elaborate dish. Despite its biblical source, this work was meant for a domestic setting, whose owner would have admired the elegant presentation of a shocking story.

Object facts

• Title: Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist
• Date: 1500s or later
• Creator attribution: Bernardino Luini (Italian, c. 1480-c. 1532)
• Culture: Italy, Milan
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 72.1 x 87 x 5.7 cm (28 3/8 x 34 1/4 x 2 1/4 in.); Unframed: 46.6 x 59.7 cm (18 3/8 x 23 1/2 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1916.824

Collection credit

Holden Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.
• Rubinstein-Bloch, Stella. Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings, Etc. Presented by Mrs. Liberty E. Holden to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1917.

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.