Receiving with impassivity, or revulsion, or mild interest the head of St. John the Baptist is one thing, but touching it, fondling it is quite another. There are a number of paintings which show Salome in direct physical contact with the severed head. This hands on contact may be viewed with some revulsion, but it also directly links Salome with the martyrdom. In the paintings of Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist by Pierre Bonnaud (1865) and Lovis Corinth (1900), the contacts take on sexual overtones bordering on necrophilia, or a decidedly unnatural act, particularly with the state of undress seen in Salome. The emphasis seems to be on the nude or semi-nude erotic figure of the princess. Aubrey Beardsley’s Salome assumes witch-like characteristics in his stark black and white illustration (See below), again underlining the erotic, fetishistic action. The hair of St. John the Baptist assumes reptilian character--a male Medusa. This may proceed from Oscar Wilde’s play of Salome and the later Richard Strauss’s opera of the same name in which Herodias is severed from the plot ostensibly and the beheading comes from St. John the Baptist’s refusal to submit to Salome’s sexual advances.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
From the XVIth Century onward there appears numerous paintings which portray Salome with the head of St. John the Baptist in what may be seen as portrait-like representations--the grisly trophy. Although the model is almost never identified, these representations are, nonetheless, portraits (See below).
Sebastiano del Piombo, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (1510)
The composition is reminiscent of Renaissance portraits with the inclusion of a window and the distant landscape
Antonio de Solario, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (1510)
Solario's Salome recalls portraits of women in courtly garb. The head of St. John the Baptist, treated in low light, nearly melts into the garment of Salome.
Lucas Cranach, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (1530)
A typical Cranach treatment of a young woman in the garb of the Saxon Court.
Onorio Marinari, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (1670)
A rather sweet representation of Salome. The head of St. John the baptist almost appears to be suckling.
Marco Benefiale, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (1720)
Salome, here, could pass for a member of the Court of Louis XIV.
The XXth and XXIst Centuries find a dearth of the subject of Salome with the head of St. John the Baptist. The subject has lost its allure. Almost, without exception, when the subject is treated, it is with sexual overtones. The German Art Nouveau proponent, Adolf Frey-Moock’s (1882-1954) paints a veiled Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (1910) with obvious erotic implication. So, too, the Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (2007) by the Polish painter, Joanna Chrobak takes on a decidedly sexual overtone (See below).
The most unusual treatment of Salome is by the Russian artist, Svetlana Kondakova’s Salome Beheading St. John Baptist (2000). This can only be viewed as a violent feminist painting in which Salome is beheading St. John the Baptist with a hand saw. Not only is the treatment unusual, Kondakova’s St. John the Baptist is a rough, tattooed man who is vainly trying to fend of the decapitation (See below). This painting is more the representation of the artist’s own psyche than the Biblical story.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
The Head of St. John the Baptist
Of the five great religions of the world, three venerate relics--i.e., Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. In Islam those relics tend to be objects associated with the Prophet Mohammed--e.g., the Holy Mantle and the Holy Banner. However graves of important Islamic and holy personages assume the role of a relic and are visited regularly by the devote. The Buddhist temple of Kandy, Sri Lanka is said to possess the tooth of The Buddha and a major festival is held each year to venerate that relic. In Christianity, relics tend to be saints or parts of their body. The Basilica of San Zeno, Verona, Italy, houses the whole body of San Zeno in a glass covered sarcophagus in the crypt.
One would think that for Christians the head of St. John the Baptist would have become a venerable relic. And, so it was, supposedly. There are three locations which, reportedly, possess the head of St. John the Baptist--the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus; San Silvestro in Capite, Rome; and the Residenz Museum in Munich. The Orthodox Church has one several sagas regarding the finding and losing the head. The journeys of the head takes on truly Byzantine twists.
An official by the name of Innocent, while building a cell, some say church, discovered the head of St. John the Baptist on the Mount of Olives. Fearing that the head would fall into hands of unbelievers, he reburied the head within the confines of the church. After Innocent died, without revealing the whereabouts of the head, the church fell into ruin. Later, during the times of Constantine the Great, two monks were on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem when they had a vision, revealing to them the location of the head. They placed the head in a sack and returned home. On the way the met a potter and gave him the sack to carry. During the night a vision came to the potter and revealed to him the contents of the head. In the night he took the sack with the head in it and went to his home and kept it hidden. As he was dying, he gave the sack with the head in it to his sister for safe keeping and the head remained in the possession of that family for some time. After some years an Arian named Eustathius, came into possession of the head and buried it in a cave near Emesa. In 425, a monastery was constructed over the site of the cave and a vision came the Archimandrite Marcellus of that monastery revealing to him the location of the head of St. John the Baptist. Around the year 820, the head was transferred to Comana in Cappadocia. In 850 a vision appeared to the Patriarch Ignatius of Constantinople revealing to him the location of St. John the Baptist’s head. He informed the Emperor Michael III of the vision and a delegation went to Comana, retrieved the head and brought it to Constantinpole where it was placed in a church.
During the Medieval Period relics became quite important. As a matter of fact there was a flourishing trade in relics from church to church. Burgos Cathedral possesses a huge inventory of relics, including the right index finger of St. Thomas á Becket and the body of El Cid. Several churches and monasteries throughout Europe claim(ed) to possess the head of St. John the Baptist. Even the small town of Saint-Jean-d’Angély, Charante Maritime, France, once claimed to possess the head.
From around the end of the XIVth Century onwards there appears numerous rather grisly paintings of the Head of St. John the Baptist on a Charger. The painting of Dirk Bouts (1460) (See below) seemed to spawn a number of copies (See below). In them we see the severed head of the saint resting on a charger, eyes nearly closed and mouth slightly open. It is of interest to note that none of these paintings portray any blood. Nearly contemporaneous with Dirk Bouts painting is the representation of the severed head by Giovanni Bellini (1464) (See below). Bellini’s work is more realistic in the Southern Renaissance sense. And, a bit of gore is encountered. Further, in this work, the mouth of St. John the Baptist is gaping in this realistic interpretation.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
The painting of Marco Palmezzano of the Head of St John the Baptist (c. 1490) depicts the severed head resting upon a ledge or narrow table top. A thin thread of blood trickles from the neck and over the edge (See below). Gian Francesco Maineri in a work dated 1520 is a bit more realistic as he depicts the spinal cord and other physical details of the severed neck. The head rests, not in a charger, but in a metal compote and upon a square of material. A pool of blood is also indicated (See below). St. John the Baptist is an important saint within the Orthodox Church. There are numerous icons of the severed head of the saint, but they lack the gore encountered in the western church’s representations. A XIXth Century icon shows the Head of St. John the Baptist upon a shallow footed bowl in the abstracted manner of Orthodox icons (See below). Modern representations of the severed head of St. John the Baptist are far less depicted than in previous centuries. The Detroit artist, Mario Moore paints a self portrait for Herodias with the Head of St. John the Baptist (2010) (See below).
Friday, September 2, 2011
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and St. John the Baptist
Guido Reni had his St. Sebastian painting over ten versions of that saint; Caravaggio seemed to be taken with St. John the Baptist. He painted eight, possibly nine versions of this saint without attendant figures. Prior to Caravaggio and the Counter Reformation St. John the Baptist had been represented as a mature adult either alone in the wilderness or baptizing the Christ. In addition, many painters portrayed the saint as an infant, usually in the presence of the Madonna and/or the infant Christ, his cousin, or so it was thought. Two artists, prior to the Counter Reformation and/or Caravaggio painted St. John the Baptist as a youth or young man--i.e., Leonardo da Vinci (1514) (See below) and Andrea del Sarto (1528) (See below). These two paintings were highly praised and were obviously influential as far as Caravaggio was concerned as all of his paintings representing St. John the Baptist as a single figure and showed the saint as a young man or youth.
In the year 1571, Michaelangelo Merisi was born in Lombaardy in the small hill town of Caravaggio. In about 1583, at approximately twelve years of age, Caravaggio apprenticed for four years with the Bergamese painter Simone Peterzano. Peterzano was a Late Mannerist with some repute in Milan. Peterzano’s subject matter ran from classic to religious with a preponderance of religious subjects, mainly in fresco. After his apprenticeship the young artist is said to have returned to his home and may have traveled to Venice. Then, in 1592, the twenty-one year old Caravaggio leaves Milan and travels to Rome with a small inheritance which didn’t last him long. Rome at the beginning of the Counter Reformation was bustling with the building of many churches and numerous, lucrative commissions were available.
Caravaggio seemed to possess a predilection for the employment of young men as models in many of his early paintings in Rome (1592- a. 1596). This is evident in such works as the Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1593), the Bacchus (1595) (See below), the The Musicians (1595), the Lute Player (1596), and the famed Amor Vincit Omnia (1601). The artist presents these young men as possessing a sense of veiled lussuriosi--they were luxurious, in the true sense of the word. His models were naturalistically treated and many of them bore the grime and character of a street urchin. They were certainly not Apollonian! The naturalism that Caravaggio employed in depicting the human model was not mere physical realism but psychological realism as well--realism with a vengeance. There is an overt sexuality, certainly sensuality in Caravaggio’s treatment of these young men. These youths may be viewed as homoerotic in a XXIst Century sense. But what may be true in the XXIst Century is not necessarily applicable in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries. It would not have been untoward to see young nude boys frolicking in the Tiber or Arno or Po Rivers, or even in the narrow lanes of the cities of Italy. In 1594 one of his paintings caught the eye of the powerful, sophisticated, aristocratic and dissolute Cardinal Del Monte.
Cardinal Francesco Maria Bourbon Del Monte Santa Maria was an early patron of the young artist. For Del Monte as well as a number of his polyvalent circle, Caravaggio painted several cabinet works. Del Monte was a highly influential churchman whose sexuality was constantly in question--so much so that it is reputed that it cost him the Papal election on at least two occasions. Although it is said that in his early life Del Monte had a mistress, he developed more than a fatherly interest in young boys in his later life. This intimate circle of Del Monte included the important and like-minded Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani who at the end of his life owned fifteen Caravaggios as well as the famed poet Giovanni Battista Marino. Both Giustiniani and Marino, reportedly possessed a dubious reputation and discretely participated in a broad range of sexual delights. During this short period--i.e., 1792-1599--Caravaggio painted, among other works: Boy Peeling a Fruit (c. 1592), Young Sick Bacchus (1593) (See below), Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1593) (See below), A Boy Bitten by a Lizard (1594), Bacchus (c. 1595), The Musicians (1595), and The Lute Player (1596). Towards the end of the series of cabinet paints Caravaggio began to employ religious subject matter. Among these are: St Francis of Assisi in Ecstacy (1595), The Penitent Magdalene (c. 1596), Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1597), St. Catherine of Alexandria (1598), Martha and Mary Magdalene (1598), Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598), Sacrifice of Isaac (1598), David and Goliath (1599) (See below), and Supper at Emaus (1601) (See below). It was probably the Cardinal Scipione Borghese who backed Caravaggio in the rejected altarpiece of Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Madonna with the Serpent) of 1606. Its rejection, apparently was based on three “problems:” the wrinkled visage of St. Anne, the neckline of the Madonna and the uncircumcised Christ. Cardinal Scipione Borghese (born Caffarelli) was the nephew of Pope Paul V and a member of Del Monte’s circle, had a notable collection of homoerotic paintings and was more than once plucked from a potentially disastrous homosexual scandal by his uncle, the Pope.
