Head of St John the Baptist

Entry

Heads of St John the Baptist carved in wood or stone and even cast in metal appeared with great frequency from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century.³ Sculptures such as the present piece, carved in white alabaster, were three-dimensional depictions of the scene of St John’s beheading as described in the Gospel of St Matthew (14:1-12). The gospel relates how Salome performed her dance before King Herod, who in exchange for her seductive moves, promised her in return anything she desired. Encouraged by her mother, Salome requested the head of John the Baptist, served on a charger.

Following the discovery of what was said to be the saint’s skull in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade and its subsequent bestowal upon Amiens Cathedral in the early thirteenth century, the veneration of John’s martyrdom and the production of so-called Johannesschüsseln took flight in north-western Europe and the German-speaking regions.⁴ Although the original reliquary made to display this relic was lost during the French Revolution, two different sources provide us with an idea of its nature. First, a written description from the year 1419 states that the reliquary was not in the usual form of a bust. Instead, the skull was mounted in a gold face mask and presented on a silver (and later gold) charger, therefore reflecting a literal interpretation of Matthew’s text. Second, a drawing from 1502 shows the reliquary consisted of a gothic metal stand/base, with the head resting on a charger.⁵

Pilgrim badges cast in the form of the reliquary of Amiens were dispersed across Europe, with the many relics in circulation housed in similar constructions. With these objects viewed as a professed miracle cure for headaches and other head-related ailments, the veneration of John the Baptist reached its peak in the fifteenth century.⁶ Devotional images, many of them in the form of a life-size decapitated head resting on a plate, were placed on church altars, used as Andachtsbilder for private and collective devotion, and carried in liturgical processions. Regularly accompanied by a separate plate or charger made of stone, wood, silver, and on occasion even ceramic, this type of sculpture was referred to as a Johannesschüssel or Johannes in disco. In architecture, carved images of this kind appeared on the roof bosses of vaults.⁷ The present head of St John the Baptist, carved in alabaster, is firmly rooted in this late-medieval visual tradition. There is no doubt it also rested on a separate charger, as suggested by the crude finishing of the reverse.

The St John’s head reveals just how readily alabaster, a relatively soft stone sort, lends itself to sculpting (or rather: carving) precise details and subtle gradations one normally expects with works executed in wood or ivory. The head’s sunken cheeks, the fallen chin and the half-shut eyes are all rendered with a tremendous sense of deathly nuance, further enhanced by the striking, but natural contrast achieved through the startled raising of the eyebrows and the limp tongue emerging from the half-open mouth. The pale, fleshy tonal quality of the stone, combined with the soft modelling of its surface, creates a penetrating and almost eerily realistic rendition of the human head. Also noteworthy is the manner in which the sculptor fully utilized the natural structure of the original alabaster block. The diagonal axis of the decapitated head is in fact determined by the veins of the stone. The head has been primarily worked in the front, with the hair and beard framing the face finished down to the tips of the curls. On the reverse, by contrast, the treatment of the hair remains summary. Here one can readily assess the kind of implement used to carve the stone, with the fairly crude, broad furrows made by a toothed gouge clearly discernible.

The art historical origin and dating of the St John’s head remain highly problematic. Stylistically, the sculpture echoes the work of an anonymous sculptor, dubbed the Master of Rimini. Active in the Southern Netherlands (Bruges?),⁸ the master’s Notname stems from an alabaster Crucifixion altar, dated circa 1430, which though now preserved in the Museum Liebieghaus in Frankfurt am Main previously stood for centuries in a church in Rimini.⁹ The master’s characteristic style, chiefly recognizable in the cascading tubular folds of the garments and the sharply defined, naturally detailed rendering of the figures’ faces, is believed to have substantially influenced the style of alabaster sculpture produced in the Low Countries and Central Germany. The stylized finishing of the hair and beard, and the penetrating, sunken countenance suggest that the maker of the present St John’s head must be described as a late follower of the Rimini Master. His style is less graphic, softer and more natural than that of the master and his immediate followers.¹⁰

Precisely this enhanced naturalism links the Amsterdam head to two other Johannesschüsseln, with which it shares evident parallels: a marble (h. 18 cm) and its presumed brown-painted terracotta modello (h. 21 cm), both virtually identical and very likely produced in the Southern Netherlands at the close of the sixteenth, or even the onset of the seventeenth century by the one and the same hand.¹¹ From at least 1673 on, the marble can be traced to the collection of the Danish kings. Attributed to Bernini in the eighteenth century, the head is today thought to be a French or Southern Netherlandish work from the late sixteenth century (fig. a).¹² The terracotta was formerly preserved at the Sint-Janskerk in Mechelen.¹³ The Amsterdam St John’s head shares a number of details with both versions, such as the frowning brow, the peapod-shaped eyes, the spaghetti-like treatment of the hair and beard, and the open mouth with tongue and teeth. The most important aspect distinguishing the alabaster from the other two pieces is the forward-tilted angle of the head, as if resting on the point of the chin aligned with the bottom edge. The marble and terracotta heads, by contrast, rested perfectly horizontal on their respective platters. The marble head appears to consist of two pieces – a freestanding head resting on a separate platter with its own row of integrally carved locks of hair – and perhaps offers an impression of the Amsterdam head in its original state: likewise resting on a separately carved alabaster platter on which the locks of hair extended. This might explain why the termination of the hair appears rather abrupt and incomplete: when in their proper place, the curls of the head would have ‘fit’ the integrally carved locks on the underlying platter.

Also noteworthy is the stylistic similarity of the Amsterdam St John’s head to a very small, boxwood version described as Franco-Flemish, today preserved in the Kunstkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (fig. b).¹⁴ The resemblance in facial type is striking, manifest in the strongly frowning eyebrows, the large, closed eyes, the sharply defined nose, the horizontal, scarcely parted lips and the treatment of the hair. When compared to the Amsterdam alabaster and the two versions in marble and terracotta, however, the carving on the Viennese head is freer, with greater variation especially in the locks of hair. This difference supports a probable dating in the first half of the seventeenth century, but by no means excludes an origin in Antwerp or Mechelen, where small-scale devotional works carved in boxwood were produced with fairly great frequency at that time, by sculptors such as Andries de Nole (1598-1638), Maria Faydherbe (1587-1643), Jan van Doorne III (1616-1663) and his stepfather Frans van Loo (1581-1658).¹⁵ The boxwood head displays an agreement with the faces on a number of De Nole’s monumental saintly statues, specifically the treatment of the facial features and hair on his statues of St Jacob and St Matthew made for the cathedral in Mechelen (1635-1637).¹⁶ Perhaps the woodcarver had access to the terracotta St John’s head from the Sint-Janskerk in that same city, in which case all four of the more or less stylistically similar St John’s heads would share the same Flemish origin. The Amsterdam alabaster would then be the earliest piece, forming a stylistic bridge between late medieval works by the Master of Rimini and the early-baroque sculptures in Copenhagen, Flanders and Vienna.

Nevertheless, the foregoing scenario remains as yet unsubstantiated by a technical analysis of the alabaster of the Amsterdam St John’s Head, as the material fails to match alabaster types commonly found in either north-western or central Europe. Spanish alabaster has been postulated, but petrographic data to assess this possibility is lacking at this time. The situation is further complicated by the recent discovery of a terracotta St John’s Head of similar dimensions and sharing many of the Amsterdam head’s facial features, with the exception of the eyes – open versus closed – and the presence of clearly defined eyebrows.¹⁷ This work is attributed to Andrea Ferrucci (c. 1465-1526), a Florentine sculptor also active in Rome and Naples for a period of time. If indeed a direct link exists between the terracotta and the alabaster, the sculptor of the Amsterdam St John’s Head must therefore possibly be sought in Italy.

Frits Scholten, 2024
This entry is partly based on unpublished research by Lisa Wiersma, 2012