Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist

Guido Reni, the most celebrated Bolognese painter of the seventeenth century and the rival of the Caravaggisti for the soul of Roman painting, returned again and again in his late years to the theme of Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist, treating the biblical heroine with the pale, silvery palette and the idealised beauty that made his late style the most imitated in Europe. This monumental canvas dates from about 1639 to 1642, the last years of his life, when he was working with the rapid, economical touch and the cool harmonies that his biographer Malvasia praised as “grace”. The subject, drawn from the Gospel of Mark, had been popular in Bologna since the sixteenth century, and Reni’s serene treatment of it stands at the opposite pole from the violent naturalism of the Caravaggisti. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.