ERCOLE GENNARI, CIRCLE OF
Cento, 1597 – Bologna, 1658
Salome receives the severed head of Saint John the Baptist in the presence of Herodias
oil on canvas, cm 130×172,5
date: 1637 ca.
The scene depicted in the painting is taken from one of the best-known episodes in the life of St John the Baptist narrated in the Gospels of Mark (6:17-28) and Matthew (14:1-12): the moment immediately following his beheading.
The original painting, from which our canvas takes its cue, is attributed to Ercole Gennari, Guercino’s assistant and brother-in-law, and is exhibited in the Pinacoteca Civica di Cento.
Although in the Gospel passages the head is handed over in an entirely different place, the scene in the painting unfolds inside the prison cell with the intention of emphasising the dramatic nature of the moment. A sombre setting prevails, except for the light that, not surprisingly, illuminates the two protagonists of the scene. On the right we can see the executioner, almost in semi-darkness, laying the freshly severed head, still dripping blood, inside a basin held by Salome. On the left, the two women are characterised by their different stances in the face of the macabre vision: the younger one turns her saddened gaze in the opposite direction, unable to bear the horror, while the older one stares smugly at the gruesome trophy.
There is an obvious stylistic difference between the female figures and the executioner, which at first led the art historian Bagni to believe the canvas was the result of a collaboration between Ercole and his brother Bartolomeo. Later, the scholar Mahon and Bagni himself assumed that these obvious differences stemmed from the fact that Ercole had used two different drawings, now at Windsor Castle, to outline the women, which Guercino had prepared, but never actually used, for the Beheading of St John, now at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Rennes – a demonstration of how a master’s drawings could be used several times and for different pieces in a workshop.