Spanish school; 17th century.

Spanish School; XVII century.
"Head of St. John".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 53 x 77 cm; 75 x 96 cm (frame).
In this canvas with old attribution to Murillo, the author approaches a subject of great dramatism, very in agreement with the popular sensibility of the baroque epoch, strongly influenced by the Counter-Reformation, which demanded to the art a realistic language so that the faithful understood and identified with the represented thing, and an expression endowed with an intense emotional content to increase the fervor and the devotion of the people. Thus, we see the decapitated head of the Baptist, placed on the golden tray on which it was given to Salome, a license taken by the artist, since in the biblical text the head of the Baptist is served on a silver platter. In the present image there are no narrative elements that tell the story; it is a devotional composition, static, where we only see the severed head, on the tray deposited on a clothed table on which also rests the reed with the phylactery typical of the iconography of the saint. The space is undefined and closed, with a dark background worked in neutral tones on which the head of the saint stands out, strongly illuminated by a light of tenebrist heritage, directed and contrasted, which leaves the secondary areas of the composition in semi-darkness, focusing the viewer's attention on the dead face of the saint. The only attribute that accompanies the protagonist is his cross with the phylactery, a characteristic element of the saint's iconography, although this scene is dominated by the surplus as the author focuses his attention on the face of St. John, who already shows the signs of death, being portrayed with drooping eyelids and yellowish skin.
John the Baptist was the son of the priest Zechariah and Elizabeth, cousin of the Virgin Mary. He retired at a very young age to the Judean desert to lead an ascetic life and preach penance, and recognized in Jesus, who was baptized by him, the Messiah announced by the prophets. A year after the baptism of Christ, in the year 29, John was arrested and imprisoned by the tetrarch of Galilee Herod Antipas, whose marriage with Herodias, his niece and sister-in-law, he had dared to censure. Finally St. John was beheaded, and his head given to Salome as a reward for his beautiful dances, after a stratagem operated by Herodias.