Salome with the Head of St John the Baptist

c. 1550 - c. 1600

Object data

Reverse painting on glass

support: height 32.4 cm × width 18.2 cm
height 41.1 cm (incl. wooden frame) × width 27.0 cm (incl. wooden frame)

Technical notes

The image was painted on the reverse of a flat panel of glass. The contours were first painted in black (probably black enamel paint), followed by a black layer of the same material, which is engraved and stippled to create highlights and shadows. The second layer of semi-opaque and opaque paint was probably executed in oil (e.g. white, pink, red, blue, green, brown, yellow-brown), with gold leaf (probably a Dutch gold, an imitation genuine gold) and silver leaf being applied locally afterwards. The framed painting could then be seen from the front, reversed left for right.

Condition

Fair. 20% of the paint layer is delaminated, and there are minor losses and some discoloured retouchings.

Provenance

…; sale, J.M. van Gelder (Wormerveer), M.J. de Haen, E.J. Asser (†) (Amsterdam), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 23 (25) April 1895 sqq., no. 1053, as German school, c. 1500, fl. 79, to the dealer Juda Isaac Boas Berg, Amsterdam;¹ from whom, fl. 90.95, to the museum, 1895

Object number: SK-A-4260

The artist

Lucas van Leyden (Leiden c. 1494 - Leiden 1533), manner of

According to Van Mander, Lucas van Leyden was born in Leiden in May or June 1494 as the son of the painter Huygh Jacobsz. He is described as a child prodigy who took to art at an early age. He was already making engravings when he was 9 years old, and sold his first painting at the age of 12. Several specialists have cast doubt on the date 1494, preferring to place his birth around 1489. Lucas was one of the five children from the first marriage of Huygh Jacobsz (c. 1460-c. 1535) to Marie Hendriksdr, who died in 1494. Although Huygh Jacobsz is well documented in the archives, there is not a single work that can be attributed to him with any certainty. Van Mander reports that Lucas was first trained by his father, and then by Cornelis Engelbrechtsz. Together with the latter and his sons, Lucas is listed as a member of the crossbowmen’s guild between 1514 and 1519. He was still living with his father in Breestraat in 1515. In early June 1521 he met Albrecht Dürer in Antwerp, with whom he exchanged prints and who drew his portrait in silverpoint. He must have returned to Leiden soon afterwards, for at the end of June he stood surety for his brother Dirk, who was also a painter. His presence in the city is documented in 1525 and 1529 for the same reason. Shortly after 1526 he must have married Lysbeth van Bosschuysen, who belonged to one of the most powerful and richest families in Leiden. Van Mander’s anecdotal story about Lucas’s journey to Zeeland, Flanders and Brabant around 1527 seems implausible, given his high output at that time, as does reports of an illness caused partly due to his suspicion that he had been poisoned. He was buried in Leiden’s Pieterskerk in 1533.

The core of Lucas van Leyden’s oeuvre consists of almost 170 engravings and etchings, almost all of which have the monogram ‘L’, most of them bearing a date between 1508 and 1530. The artistic rivalry with the graphic work of Albrecht Dürer, which had already been remarked upon by Vasari, was central to his entire development. The reputation that Lucas enjoyed during his lifetime was due mainly to the international circulation of his prints. In addition to his work as an engraver he designed woodcuts, book illustrations and stained-glass roundels.

Some of the paintings described by Van Mander have survived, including his earliest dated panels of a Diptych with the Virgin and Child with a Donor and Mary Magdalen of 1521.² The Triptych with the Last Judgement of c. 1526-27,³ and the Triptych with the Dance around the Golden Calf of c. 1530 (SK-A-3841) are also described by Van Mander, as is his last dated painting, The Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho of 1531.⁴ In addition to a tempera painting of Moses Striking Water from the Rock,⁵ which is signed and dated 1527, there are a dozen other pictures that can be attributed to the master. His early work, dating from around 1508, consists of small pieces with half-length figures in Old Testament scenes, as well as people playing chess and cards. Among his mature works are the altarpieces, as well as a few portraits and small devotional works.

Updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2017

References
Vasari 1568, III, p. 860; Van Mander 1604, fols. 211-15; Dülberg 1899b; Wescher in Thieme/Becker XXIII, 1929, pp. 168-70; Friedländer X, 1932, pp. 78-113, 134-38; Hoogewerff III, 1939, pp. 207-320; Rupprich I, 1956, pp. 174-75; ENP X, 1973, pp. 46-63, 81-84; Vos 1978b; Miedema III, 1996, pp. 1-31; Filedt Kok in Turner 1996, XIX, pp. 756-62; Kik in exh. cat. Leiden 2011, pp. 198-99

Entry

Salome is here presenting the head of John the Baptist to her parents (Matthew 14:6-11; Mark 6:21-28). The actual beheading can be seen through a window in the right background. The main scene is a mirror-image copy after Lucas van Leyden’s woodcut Herod and Herodias from his Small Power of Women series of c. 1517 (fig. a). The woodcut also shows the beheading through a window, this time on the left, but it was not repeated in the glass painting, the artist choosing instead to reproduce another of Lucas’s prints, The Beheading of St John the Baptist of c. 1513 (fig. b). The only additions made by the glass painter are the tiled floor and the reclining dog.

The drawing of this reverse-glass painting is fairly coarse, preserving little of the graphic refinement of the models.

The present plain, light-coloured wooden frame (fig. c) is clearly not original. The two other examples of this technique in the Rijksmuseum are still in their original frames: a small Triptych with the Last Supper from the circle of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (SK-A-4294 and The Holy Trinity in the manner of Maarten van Heemskerck SK-C-1563).

The present work is interesting from a technical point of view because the artist employed the full range of options open to him for translating his black-and-white models into colour, combining line drawing, heightenings and incisions. While the reverse painting on glass, Triptych with the Last Supper (SK-A-4294) can be placed confidently in Amsterdam in the early 16th century, there are no clues as to the date or place of origin of the present one. It must have been made after c. 1517, which is the date of the main model, but it was probably executed in the second half of the 16th century in the Netherlands.⁶

(Jan Piet Filedt Kok)

Literature

Ritz 1972, p. 154, no. 10 (as Van Leyden)

Download Bibliography (PDF)

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 322, no. 2916 (as Van Leyden); 1934, p. 347, no. 2916 (as Van Leyden); 1976, p. 346, no. A 4260

Citation

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2010, 'manner of Lucas van Leyden, Salome with the Head of St John the Baptist, c. 1550 - c. 1600', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.63689

(accessed 13 November 2024 02:04:17).

Figures

Lucas van Leyden, *Herod and Herodias*, c. 1517. Woodcut, 241 x 170 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Lucas van Leyden, *The Beheading of St John the Baptist*, c. 1513. Engraving, 107 x 95 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

fig. c Manner of Lucas van Leyden, *Salome with the Head of St John the Baptist*, c. 1550-1600. With non-original frame