Salome with the Head of the Baptist (after Reni)

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787). Oil painting on canvas, Salome with the Head of the Baptist by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787), circa 1740-1762. A copy after Guido Reni's painting, from around 1639 to 1642, originally in Palazzo Colonna, Rome, owned by the Earls of Darnley at Cobham Hall and now in the Art Institute of Chicago. Salome stands in the centre, in a pink dress which she holds up with her right hand. In the other hand she clasps the Baptist's severed head by his hair over a platter which is supported by a servant, half kneeling, wearing blue and with a sword behind his back, on the right. Behind Salome stand two female attendants on the left and on the right, in the background, another servant pulls the curtain aside and looks upon the scene. The picture depicts an episode from the New Testament, Mark 6: 21-28 in which she presents the head to Herodias but unusually her eyes are not averted. Stourhead, Wiltshire (Accredited Museum)