The Head of Saint John the Baptist Brought before Herod (1455–60): Artwork and History

The Head of Saint John the Baptist Brought before Herod (1455–60) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Giovanni di Paolo (Italian, 1398–1482).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This series of panels illustrates scenes from the life of Saint John the Baptist, a prophet who foretold Jesus’s arrival as the Christian savior. The Art Institute’s collection includes six panels that were originally part of a group of 12 that possibly formed the doors of a reliquary shrine to the saint. The narrative begins as John leaves civilization, entering the wilderness to become a hermit. In a following scene, John wears a hair shirt, a coarse undergarment symbolizing his ascetic life, as he announces that Jesus is the savior prophesied as the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. Subsequent panels show John’s imprisonment and violent execution at the hands of Herod, ruler of Galilee. Giovanni di Paolo related the Baptist’s complex biography with expressive figures represented multiple times to indicate their movement through highly imaginative and stylized settings.

Object facts

• Title: The Head of Saint John the Baptist Brought before Herod
• Date: 1455–60
• Artist attribution: Giovanni di Paolo (Italian, 1398–1482)
• Place of origin: Italy
• Medium: Tempera on panel
• Dimensions: 68.5 × 40.2 cm (27 × 15 13/16 in.); Framed: 79.4 × 52.1 × 8.9 cm (31 1/4 × 20 1/2 × 3 1/2 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.1015

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.