Salome with the Head of the Baptist (after Reni)
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1740 - 1762
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2616 x 1752 mm (103 x 69 in)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Stourhead, Wiltshire
NT 732316
Caption
Salome clasps John the Baptist’s severed head by his hair over a platter which is supported by a semi-kneeling servant. Her gaze is not averted and she looks serenely at the pale head. A servant pulls a curtain aside and looks upon the scene. Two female attendants stand behind Salome, none of whom look on in horror. In the biblical story when Salome has danced for King Herod, she is offered anything she wishes. Her mother, and his wife, Herodias, asked her to request the head of John the Baptist. Herod, bound by his promise, fulfilled her wish. Batoni, was on the most famous portrait painters in Rome in the second half of the 18th century. This is his copy of Guido Reni's painting of 1639/42, originally in Palazzo Colonna, Rome, which he did early on in his career. Reni’s painting was subsequently owned by the Earls of Darnley at Cobham Hall and now hangs in the Art Institute in Chicago.
Summary
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 biblical scene 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. Another copy of this painting by Reni and reputedly also by Pompeo Batoni was in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s collection and posthumous sale, Christie’s, 4th day, 16th March, lot 14 (bought by ‘Dermer’ for 19 gns.).
Provenance
Acquired in Rome by Henry II Hoare (1705-85) and seen by Walpole in July 1762 as 'Herodias's Daughter'; and thence by descent; given to the National Trust along with the house, its grounds, and the rest of contents by Sir Henry Hugh Arthur Hoare, 6th Bt (1865 – 1947) in 1946.
Credit line
Stourhead, The Hoare Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787), artist after Guido Reni (Bologna 1575 – Bologna 1642), artist
References
Walpole 1927-28 Paget Toynbee (ed.), 'Horace Walpole's Journals of Visits to Country Seats, etc.', 1760-62, Walpole Society XVI, 1927 -28 pp. 9-80, p.43 Stourhead 1785 Schedule of Pictures left by Henry Hoare at his death, 1785 Russell 1975/76 Francis Russell, 'The Stourhead Batonis and other copies after Reni', National Trust Year Book, 1975-76, pp.109-11 fig.2 Pompeo Batoni and his British Patrons, The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, London 1982, p.10 Clark and Bowron 1985 Anthony M. Clark & Edgar Peters Bowron (ed.), Pompeo Batoni A Complete Catalogue of his Works with an Introductory Text, Oxford 1985, p.218, no.31, pl.34 Pompeo Batoni. Prince of Painters in Eighteenth-Century Rome (E. P. Bowron and Peter Björn Kerber), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 21 October 2007- 27 January 2008 & The National Gallery, London 20 February - 18 May 2008, Yale University Press, 2007, pp.8 & 182, n.36 Gore 1964 F. St. John Gore, 'Prince of Georgian collectors - the Hoares of Stourhead', Country Life 30 January 1964, pp.210-12.