Flemish School or Prague School; early 17th century

Flemish or Prague school; early 17th century.
"Banquet of Herod".
Oil on canvas.
Re-drawn.
Size: 140 x 110 cm.
It is thought that the author of this oil painting, whose painting "Herod's Feast" (kept in the National Gallery of Scotland) is based on this composition. As in the original painting, it is a banquet with numerous figures in an open interior with an arch at the back and a canopy on the right, a fully Baroque solution. Salome presents Herod with the head of John the Baptist, and like a flurry of chain reactions each figure exclaims, bows, turns away... showing us a bold gallery of expressions of sumptuous attire. The painter depicts the characters according to the fashion of the time. The lighting and colouring of the velvety, bluish tones of the garments are outstanding, as is the profound drama of the faces and gestures, which freeze a moment of great intensity.
Baptist had reproached King Herod Antipas for his marriage to Herodias, since she had divorced her first husband, Herod Philip, the king's brother, to marry Antipas. Because of this, Herod had St. John imprisoned. On Herod's birthday, Salome offered him a dance and he told her to make a wish. Salome, instigated by Herodias, asked for the Baptist's head. Herod then had him beheaded. This scene has been widely represented in the history of art, with different compositions, more or less dramatic.
Formally, this work is dominated by the influence of the Flemish or Prague school. The figures are monumental, with idealised faces and serene, balanced gestures, in an idealised representation based on classical canons. The rhetoric of the gestures, theatrical and eloquent, clearly baroque, is also typical of 17th-century classicism.