Salome Presents the Head of St John the Baptist to King Herod

Author: Klazina Botke

The frescoes in the Chiostro dello Scalzo in Florence are considered to be among Andrea del Sarto’s (1486-1530) finest artistic achievements. The grisaille paintings, which were made between 1508/12 and 1526 by Del Sarto and Franciabigio (1484-1525), illustrate the life of John the Baptist in twelve scenes. In the sixteenth century they served as a model for many artists, one of whom made this and another drawing in our collection (inv. I 114). The red chalk study is a copy after the fresco in which John’s head is being displayed to Herod (1523). The king and his wife Herodias are celebrating his birthday with a banquet. His daughter Salome is entering the room on the left. Under her arm she has a platter on which there is the decapitated head of John the Baptist, the gift that she had asked Herod, on the insistence of her mother, to give her after she had danced for him.^[1] Notably, though, the drawing is not an exact copy of the fresco. Herodias, for instance, is behind the table instead of being seated on the left. Moreover, her head is drawn twice, as if the artist was experimenting with the model he was copying. The horrified young man in the middle of the fresco has been moved to the right in the drawing.^[2] Additionally, the Baptist’s head is hidden by Salome’s arm as she clasps the platter to her side.

Herodias was drawn again on the verso of the sheet, but this time looking more like the figure in the fresco. If the sheet is turned 90 degrees to the right there is also a less detailed drawing of two men forming a group that was borrowed from The Capture of John the Baptist, another fresco by Del Sarto in the same cloister.

Koenigs acquired this sheet and two others, I 114 and I 112, as works by Andrea del Sarto himself.^[3] Fröhlich-Bum (1928) regarded them as autograph preliminary studies, while Fraenckel (1935) described them as later copies after his work.^[4] Berenson (1938 and 1961) attributed them to Giovanni Battista Naldini (1535-1591), and Freedberg (1963) agreed.^[5] Barocchi (1965), though, believed that they were works by Francesco Morandini (1544-1597), whereas Shearman (1965) dismissed them as forgeries from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, with deliberate pentimenti to give them an authentic look.^[6] Monbeig Goguel (1991 and 2005), finally, gave the Rotterdam drawing to Giovanni Battista Vanni (1599-1660), together with a sheet in the Louvre, which according to her are definitely by the same hand as the three sheets in the Koenigs Collection.^[7] Petrioli Tofani (1999) also argued that this group of drawn copies after Del Sarto were by Vanni.^[8] The assumption by Petrioli Tofani and Monbeig Goguel is largely based on a remark by Baldinucci, who wrote in his Notizie de' professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua (1681-1728) that Vanni made copies for a print series engraved by Domenico Falcini (1575-1632).^[9] Those prints, however, have not survived, and since the Rotterdam drawings are clearly not precise copies it seems unlikely that they were made for that purpose. On top of that, the Rotterdam sheets can be dated around 1560 on the evidence of their watermark.^[10] That would mean that Vanni was using paper that was roughly fifty years old. Although not impossible, it is highly unlikely. That leaves the identity of the copyist unresolved. The sheets are probably drawn exercises by a pupil in a Florentine artists’ workshop. In Frankfurt there are a number of similar drawings that may be by the same hand.^[11]