Salome is depicted here presenting the head of John the Baptist, whose body, still propped on its left elbow, lies behind her on the floor to the right in an empty, palatial space. Behind Salome on the left are several figures on three levels who are engaged in conversation and pay no attention to the scene.
Francisco de Herrera the Elder, Juan de Valdés Leal, and the latter's son, Lucas Valdés, have been proposed as the authors of this work, which is still considered an anonymous drawing by a Sevillan artist from the second half of the seventeenth century.[2] The hatching technique in Salome's drapery and John's head would suggest Herrera the Elder, but it is not uniformly applied. The very loose pen lines, above all in the area of the architecture and the body of the Baptist, however, suggest his son, Herrera the Younger. The pupils of Salome's eyes, which Jonathan Brown finds so typical of the latter, could confirm this.[3]

Jens Hoffmann-Samland


1 Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, inventory, acquisitions 1948-1964, 109.
2 Stubbe (dir.) 1966, 6.
3 See Brown 1975, 238. Enrique Valdivieso also believes that Herrera the Younger is very possibly the work's author, and suggests a dating of ca. 1675. I am sincerely grateful for his assistance in May 2012.

Details about this work

• Label

  Beschriftung fremd: Auf dem Verso bezeichnet: "Imo [...?] / her / mano de el Ilmo / Art[e]aga u Señor mie [...?]" (Feder in Braunc, um 180 Grad gedreht)

• Provenance

  Heinrich Vetter Buch und Kunstantiquariat, Theresienstr. 77, München; erworben aus Mitteln der Campe'schen Historischen Kunststiftung.

• Bibliography

  The Spanish Gesture. Drawings from Murillo to Goya in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Jens Hoffmann-Samland, with contributions by María Cruz de Carlos Varona, Gabriele Finaldi, José Manuel Matilla u. a., 2014, S. 214, Abb., Abb.-Nr. , Kat.-Nr. 83

  Spanische Zeichnungen von El Greco bis Goya, Wolf Stubbe; Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1966, S. 6, Abb.-Nr.