Herodias' Revenge

Herodias' Revenge, at Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp, depicts the aftermath of John the Baptist's execution—Salome presenting the head of John to her mother Herodias, who had demanded it as the price of her daughter's dancing. Juan de Flandes was a Flemish painter active at the Spanish court of Isabella I of Castile, and this work belongs to the altarpiece cycle depicting the life of John the Baptist that he created alongside other Flemish masters for the Spanish royal collection. Museum Mayer van den Bergh holds this as part of a significant collection of medieval and early Renaissance art.

The scene is depicted as an intimate interior exchange—Salome holding the Baptist's head on a platter, Herodias receiving it—with the horrific subject given the controlled, clear light treatment of Flemish panel painting. Juan de Flandes's precise oil modeling gives each face a psychological specificity that transforms the gruesome subject into a study in complicity and moral consequence.