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THE BEHEADING OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

33.5 x 42 x 2cm

Second half of 17th century

The moment just after the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist is shown. The executioner, turned three-quarters towards the left, grips his drawn sword in the lowered left hand while in the outstretched right he holds the saint’s severed head, ready to place it on the platter held by the standing figure of Salome opposite. He wears the uniform of a Roman soldier, with a laminated cuirass and a red cloak entirely covering the right arm and falling to the ground. Salome is distinguished by her regal raiment: a coronet on her head, a long rose chiton with a shorter deep blue one over it, embroidered on the shoulder, and a purple mantle tied high on the shoulder. At the left, a woman turned three-quarters right advances and looks down at John; her body is wrapped completely in a deep blue mantle, leaving only the lower part of her long rose dress exposed. Saint John, headless and lying on the ground, is viewed from the side, turned towards the left. He wears the fleece and a long chiton covering him completely.
The scene is set inside the prison, indicated by a uniform stone wall with two arched, barred windows on the right and a larger arched gateway on the left. Two of Christ’s bearded disciples peer in from behind the railings.
Visible through the left window is another building with a smaller window from which a male figure looks down. Beyond the gateway, in the background, is a landscape of rolling hills. The scene is surrounded by a wide gold band on the upper part of which is an inscription in well-written red capitals: H AΠΟΤΟΜΗ ΤΗC CEBACMIAC ΚΕΦΑΛΗC TOY TIMIOY ENΔΟΞΟΥ Κ(ΑΙ) ΠΡΟΦΗΤΟΥ ΠΡΟΔΡΟΜΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΒΑΠΤΙCTOY ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ (The severing of the revered head of the holy, glorious and Prophet Forerunner and Baptist John).
The iconography of the scene differs from that established by the icons of Michael Damaskenos, Theodoros Poulakis and other painters in the Ionian Islands, in which the preparation for the Beheading is depicted.¹ A description of the Beheading in the version showing the scene after John’s decapitation, as in our icon, is given in the Painter’s Manual by Dionysios: ‘… a short distance from the palace the prison with barred windows and outside this the Forerunner beheaded lying on the ground, and the executioner holding the (severed) head in the hand places this on a platter held by the maiden in front of him; and a little way yonder the apostles Andrew and John interring his body in the tomb’.² In this description the episode of Herod’s Banquet is added to the scene, in which a servant ‘who is seen from a window to the height of the chest and the arms’ participates, as in our icon.
Iconographic elements in common with those in our icon occur in an engraving of the same theme by J. Sadeler.³ The executioner, who holds the Forerunner’s severed head, is in exactly the same pose, the only difference being that he is portrayed half-naked in the engraving whereas he wears the uniform of a Roman soldier in our icon. The position, pose and dress of the other figures differ, however. In our icon Salome stands opposite the executioner and not beside him, while she is arrayed as a Byzantine princess and not half-naked; John’s headless body is turned sideways and not placed obliquely, while he wears the fleece and a long mantle covering his whole body instead of being half-naked. Nevertheless, the model of Sadeler’s engraving appears exactly the same in icons in Cephalonia⁴ as well as in a late eighteenth-century icon in Zakynthos (Fig. 189).⁵ The painter of our icon adapted the Western model to the demands of traditional art. He dressed the figures in garments usual in earlier Cretan icons and gave the faces, such as those of the two disciples behind the railings, features familiar from sixteenth-century Cretan painting.⁶ Although the intermediate tones have been erased, it seems that the flesh is modelled with small brown brushstrokes and white highlights on the prominent planes. The folds of the drapery, especially on the garments of Salome and of the approaching woman enveloped in her deep blue mantle, are drawn adroitly with white lines describing geometric shapes and delicate white highlights at the edges. The same dexterity is apparent in the drawing of the executioner’s uniform with the laminated cuirass. Last, the pose and garb of Saint John the Baptist belong to the most conservative models of fifteenth-century Cretan painting.” Both iconographic types of the Beheading were diffused in Zakynthos, where Damaskenos’s iconography is encountered, as in icon Cat. no. 51 (Figs 238, 239),⁷ and an iconography like that of our icon, as in an eighteenth-century icon in the Zakynthos Museum, which is part of a series of scenes, from the church of the Hagio Pnevma Gaitaniou (Fig. 188).⁸
The iconographic model of this icon is exactly the same as ours, except that it is used in reverse. The poses, the garments, the colours and the details of the building with the barred windows are identical, attesting a stylistic affinity too, with analogous mingling of Western and traditional elements; the broad gold band with the extended inscription in capital letters is also common to both. The above similarities bear indirect witness to our icon’s provenance from the same island, while its stylistic traits point to a period perhaps later than that of the icon from the church of the Hagio Pnevma Gaitaniou. Lastly, the manner and the position of the long inscription in capital letters in our icon recalls analogous inscriptions in icons by Theodoros Poulakis and Stephanos Tzankarolas.⁹ The painter of our icon with his personal style was surely a contemporary of these artists.

CONDITION  Good, though damaged on the painted surface due to the previous method of cleaning.

PROVENANCE Zakynthos (?).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Unpublished.

ΝΟΤΕS

1. See icon of the Beheading, Cat. no. 51, 378-380, with related bibliography.
2. Hermeneia 1909, 177.
3. Rigopoulos 1979, pl. 151, fig. 163.
4. Cephalonia I 1989, fig. 211, 126. Cephalonia II 1994, fig. 118. Rigopoulos 1979, pl. 150, fig. 162.
5. Zakynthos Museum, unpublished.
6. See icon by the painter Stylianos, in Cyprus, Cat. no. 10 (Fig. 51) and other examples, in which the saint’s head has not been severed, Chatzidakis 1974, 204-205, pl. ΛΓ’, 1, 2.
7. See Cat. no. 51, 378-380, n. 1.
8. Unpublished (no, 390).
9. Rigopoulos 1979, pls 14, 22, 23, 25, 27, 86, 87. Vocotopoulos 1990, no, 128, 160, fig. 64.