Piety and virtue: Images of Salome with the head of John the Baptist in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance

Salome, the girl who demanded the head of John the Baptist and thereby brought about the saint's death, was represented with increasing prominence in Christian art beginning around the thirteenth century. All over western Europe, narrative cycles of the Baptist's life showed Salome as important and dignified; concurrently, she was also isolated in non-narrative works of art. This tendency to emphasize Salome continued until the mid-sixteenth century.; This dissertation argues that the attention paid by late medieval artists to Salome, traditionally viewed as seductive and sinful, was the result of a widely-held belief that she could be considered necessary, beneficent, and even virtuous. This belief was precipitated by the importance of the head of the Baptist in European culture at the time. As images of the Baptist's head proliferated from around 1200 to 1550, Salome's role in the visual arts changed. Rather than being shown as a worldly dancer, as she had been in the earlier Middle Ages, Salome was depicted in later medieval art holding out the Baptist's head for the viewer to venerate. The Church sought to draw attention to the importance of the Baptist's head, and in particular, to its Eucharistic significance. Salome's image was used to further this goal. Religious artwork compared Salome receiving John's head to the gentiles accepting Christ in the sacrament. Once Salome was recognized as a redeemed figure—as a prototype for the faithful, or Church, receiving the “Eucharistic” head in salvation—she became the subject of devotional and secular art, celebrated as a virtuous woman. In the mid-sixteenth century, when the impact of the Reformation caused images of the Baptist's head to wane in popularity, Salome's role again changed. Protestant imagery either relegated her to the background of John's beheading or showed her in a moralizing context. Yet in Italy and Spain, where the tenets of Catholicism were reinforced during the Counter Reformation, images of the Baptist's head and Salome continued to proliferate. This suggests that Salome's rise in religious art and thought is the manifestation of a particularly Catholic devotion, which flourished all over Europe until the mid-sixteenth century.