Salome Receives the Head of St John the Baptist from the Executioner

Entry

This stone relief depicts a scene of the beheading of St John the Baptist, which has just transpired. John’s body slumps over with blood gushing from his neck. Standing over this carnage is the executioner who committed the barbarous act. With his extended left arm, he lays John’s blindfolded head on a charger held by Salome. King Herod’s stepdaughter is portrayed as a woman of sumptuous wealth. The entire scene takes place outside a city rampart wall rendered in fantastical late-gothic and renaissance architectural detail.

The dating of this relief can readily be determined from the clothing worn by Salome and the executioner. While no known parallel exists for Salome’s fantasized headgear, her renaissance attire is commonly encountered in South-Netherlandish art from the second quarter of the sixteenth century. The executioner’s raiment – Pluderhose (paned slops), hairnet and plume – is that of a mercenary soldier. In the Low Countries, a familiarity with attire of this sort arose with the arrival of armed German/Swiss Landsknechte serving in the army of Emperor Charles V. Also contributing to the dissemination of this fashion in the region were prints by Dürer, Beham and Holbein. All of this points to a dating in the second quarter of the sixteenth century.

In the eye for detail, the compact composition and setting, this relief is highly similar to wood-carved reliefs from large late-gothic retables produced in the Southern Netherlands. This particular piece, however, was unlikely ever part of a stone retable. Judging by the material and scale, it probably came from a stone rood screen, i.e. an ornate partition separating the chancel of a church from its nave. A function of this nature is confirmed by a markedly similar scene of St John the Baptist’s beheading on a rood screen of Brabantine origin, today fully intact in the Sint-Maternusbasiliek in Walcourt (Hainaut).¹ Said to have been given to the church by Charles V, the rood screen dates from 1531. On the side facing the church’s nave, the structure is adorned with statues of saints and a number of reliefs, including a scene of the Beheading of St John (fig. a). The reliefs, each accompanied by the name of its respective donor, were added after the screen’s completion, with one dated 1537, i.e. six years after the rood screen’s completion.² Like the rood screen itself, these reliefs are attributed to Brabant based on stylistic criteria.

When compared to the Beheading scene in Walcourt, the Amsterdam relief is conceived more spaciously. Not only is the scene more detailed, but it also conveys a greater sense of dynamic, narrative and drama. Despite their differences, the similarity between the two works is striking, e.g. the arrangement of the composition, set in front of a city rampart, the attire of both Salome and the executioner and the prominent detail of the neck, with blood gushing out onto the floor. From this one can infer that both reliefs arose from one or more shared precursors. Given their sense of narrative both would have ultimately derived from a composition in the form of a drawing, painting or print.

A possible source is work by the so-called ‘Antwerp Mannerists’, in the Amsterdam relief particularly observable in the executioner’s exaggerated and theatrical pose and the almost caricatural face. The subject of John the Baptist’s beheading appears quite frequently in the work of these Mannerists, with elements in the present relief recurring in various forms, e.g. the ornate, fantastical architecture in the background, the exaggerated poses, the positioning of John’s headless body and the rendering of the executioner’s attire as that of a mercenary.³ The popularity of this theme in Antwerp during the period 1510-25 is associated with Dürer’s woodcut of the same theme from 1510.⁴

No less significant is a stylistic affinity with paintings by the so-called Master of Amiens, who though based in northern France was clearly affected by influences emanating from Antwerp. A panel attributed to this master, or a painter of northern-French origin in his immediate circle, depicts Christ’s Ascension on the front side, with painted en grisaille figures of Martha and Lazarus on the reverse. In the recumbent figure of an apostle in the foreground of the scene of the Ascension, one can discern the executioner’s protruding chin and exaggerated pose (fig. b).⁵ Moreover, the tall boots of the richly attired man on the far left of the Berlin panel echo the executioner’s so-called Pluderhose. Similarities in the drapery folds can also be observed when comparing the Martha on the panel’s reverse to the carved-relief figure of Salome. Other shared elements include the renaissance architecture on the grisaille side of the panel, featuring balustrade pillars and the dentil moulding, details also present in the relief.

In light of such noteworthy parallels to works produced by a painter from northern France, one cannot dismiss the possibility that the Amsterdam relief perhaps also came from this region. Additional support for this interpretation lies in the fact that the relic of St John’s decapitated head was preserved in the city of Amiens, an important centre of the saint’s veneration, located in northern France. In the ambulatory of Amiens Cathedral one finds a similar stone-carved image that dates from the 1530s. Clear similarities can be observed when comparing this piece to the work from Walcourt, and to a lesser degree, the Amsterdam relief. Yet these agreements also show that in the early decades of the sixteenth century an established iconography of St John’s beheading indeed existed, with variations introduced by artists both in the Southern Netherlands and northern France. All are ultimately traceable to Rogier van der Weyden’s (c. 1400-1464) St John’s Altarpiece (c. 1455).⁶ For the time being, however, the most probable interpretation of the Amsterdam relief situates its production in a Brabantine workshop based in Antwerp or Mechelen, two cities with a rich and thriving tradition in stone-carving during this period.

Frits Scholten, 2024
This entry was partly based on unpublished notes made by Willy Halsema-Kubes