Salomé recevant du bourreau la tête de saint Jean-Baptiste

Salomé Receiving from the Executioner the Head of Saint John the Baptist, held at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence and dated 1700 — well after Strozzi's death in 1644 — raises attribution questions that may indicate a late dating error, a workshop product, or a misidentification. The Salomé subject was one of Baroque painting's most charged: a young woman receiving the severed head of a holy man on a platter, the result of her dance and her mother's revenge. Caravaggio's brutal treatment set a dark standard, and subsequent painters negotiated between horror and beauty in depicting the moment of reception. Strozzi's version, if authentic, would bring his characteristic warm characterisation and direct observation to what is an inherently theatrical and morally complex scene.

Canvas with the half-length format typical of Caravaggesque treatments of the Salomé subject — a close focus that prevents distance from the moral drama. The severed head is rendered with enough realism to provoke but not overwhelm. Salomé's expression — fascination, revulsion, indifference — is the painting's psychological crux.