Herodias—the mother of Salome—swoons at the sight of the head of John the Baptist, which she had urged her daughter to demand on a platter as a reward for her dance. Unfortunately, the bottom of the canvas was cut to eliminate the grisly detail of John’s head. Cairo made something of a specialty of grisly subjects, combining acts of violence and a kind of morbid eroticism. The picture was painted in Turin, where the artist was court painter to Duke Vittorio Amedeo I of Savoy (1587–1637) between 1633 and 1637.
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Title:Herodias
Artist:Francesco Cairo (Italian, Milan 1607–1665 Milan)
Date:before 1635
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:29 5/8 x 24 5/8 in. (75.2 x 62.5 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Paul Ganz, in memory of Rudolf Wittkower, 1973
Accession Number:1973.165
Mrs. A. Marcus (until 1962; sale, Sotheby's, London, March 21, 1962, no. 13, as "A Female Saint in ecstasy," for £300 to Berry); Mr. and Mrs. Paul Ganz, New York (by 1965–73)
Detroit Institute of Arts. "Art in Italy, 1600–1700," April 6–May 9, 1965, no. 141 (lent by Mr. and Mrs. Paul H. Ganz).
Musei Civici di Varese. "Francesco Cairo, 1607–1665," October 1–December 31, 1983, no. 20.
Mariagrazia Brunori. "Considerazioni sul primo tempo di Francesco del Cairo." Bollettino d'arte 49 (July–September 1964), pp. 241, 244, identifies the subject as Herodias and suggests that the head of Saint John the Baptist may have been cut out for commercial reasons; discusses the picture in relation to three other versions of the subject by the artist [see Notes].
Frederick Cummings inArt in Italy, 1600–1700. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1965, p. 129, no. 141, ill., calls the subject "probably" Herodias and suggests that the head of Saint John the Baptist was originally included in the composition; states that of the other three versions of the subject by Cairo, the MMA painting is closest to the one in Vicenza and dates both works before 1635, during Cairo's early period while he was court painter at Turin.
Howard Hibbard and Milton Lewine. "Seicento at Detroit." Burlington Magazine 107 (July 1965), pp. 370–71, fig. 35, state that it is described in the Detroit catalogue [see Ref. Cummings 1965] as a fragment, which they find "possible but by no means assured"; add that the version in Vicenza apparently depicts the same model and dates from the same time.
Mariagrazia Brunori. "Spigolature in margine al Del Cairo." Pantheon 25 (March/April 1967), p. 105, fig. 1, calls it an early work, and repeats her remarks from 1964 on the subject [see Ref.].
Anthony M. Clark inThe Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notable Acquisitions, 1965–1975. New York, 1975, p. 93, ill.
Rodolphe Bedö. "Sur un tableau de Francesco del Cairo." Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts no. 44 (1975), p. 91, fig. 77, as "Tête de femme," erroneously as still in the Ganz collection.
Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, pp. 298, 302, fig. 535 (color), dates it "before 1635?" and calls it possibly a fragment of a larger Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.
Marco Magnifico et al. inFrancesco Cairo, 1607–1665. Exh. cat., Musei Civici di Varese. [Varese], 1983, pp. 7–8, 11, 116, 120–21, 267, no. 20, ill., tentatively date it to the first half of the 1630s, contemporary with the version in Vicenza and before those in Boston and Turin; in addition to these four works, mention two more pictures with the same subject by Cairo: one in a private collection, Milan, and one sold at Finarte, Milan.
Nancy Ward Neilson inLa pittura in Italia: il Seicento. Ed. Mina Gregori and Erich Schleier. revised and expanded ed. Milan, 1989, vol. 2, p. 661, dates it about 1635.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 108, ill.
Nancy Ward Neilson inThe Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. Vol. 5, New York, 1996, pp. 405–6.
Sandro Bellesi. Cesare Dandini. Turin, 1996, p. 164.
Francesco Frangi. Francesco Cairo. Turin, 1997, pp. 28, 34–36, fig. 16, colorpl. VIII, in addition to the pictures in New York, Boston, Vicenza, and Turin, mentions that there are numerous lost versions of the subject known through old documents.
Francesco Frangi. Francesco Cairo. Turin, 1998, pp. 8, 10, 56, 58, 239, 241, no. 19, fig. 21, colorpl. VIII [text similar to Ref. Frangi 1997], concurs with Brunori [see Ref. 1964] that the work must have been cut down at the bottom to remove the head of Saint John the Baptist, and adds that the canvas may also have been cut down at the sides; dates it to the same period as the version in Turin, and earlier than those in Boston and Vicenza.
Bronwen Wilson. "The Appeal of Horror: Francesco Cairo's 'Herodias and the Head of John the Baptist'." Oxford Art Journal 34 (October 2011), pp. 357, 370–72, fig. 15 (color), without assigning a specific date beyond ca. 1630s or possibly as late as the early 1640s, suggests that it may be the latest of the four known versions, since the transformation of Herodias into John that she sees as a continuing theme is here complete: the neckline of Herodias's black dress effectively severs her head from her body, the gold drapery framing her head evokes both the charger on which John's head was displayed as well as his halo, and her expression and the position of her head recall traditional depictions of the head of Saint John the Baptist.
Edgar Peters Bowron. "Introduction: The Critical Fortunes of Italian Baroque Painting in America." Buying Baroque: Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America. Ed. Edgar Peters Bowron. University Park, Pa., 2017, p. 11, fig. 5 (color).
Andrea Bayer. "Better Late than Never: Collecting Baroque Painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Buying Baroque: Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America. Ed. Edgar Peters Bowron. University Park, Pa., 2017, pp. 135–36, 153 n. 33.
Richard E. Spear. "An Invisible Web: Art Historians Behind the Collecting of Italian Baroque Art." Buying Baroque: Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America. Ed. Edgar Peters Bowron. University Park, Pa., 2017, pp. 58, 145 n. 17.
Virginia Brilliant. Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings in the Ringling Museum of Art. New York, 2017, pp. 42–43 n. 2, under no. I.30.
Carl Brandon Strehlke inLa collection Alana: Chefs-d’œuvre de la peinture italienne. Ed. Carlo Falciani and Pierre Curie. Exh. cat., Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris. Brussels, 2019, p. 41.
Other versions of this subject by Francesco Cairo are in the Pinacoteca, Vicenza, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Galleria Sabauda, Turin. All three of these works include the head of John the Baptist. The Met's work has evidently been cut down; the Baptist's head probably originally rested just below Herodias's right hand.
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