Composition
The image depicts the execution of John the Baptist while nearby Salome stands with a golden platter to receive his head. Another woman, who has been identified as Herodias or simply a bystander who realizes that the execution is wrong, stands by in shock while a jailer issues instructions and the executioner draws his dagger to finish the beheading. The scene, popular with Italian artists in general and with Caravaggio himself, is not directly inspired by the Bible, but rather by the tale as related in Golden Legend.
It is the only work by Caravaggio to bear the artist's signature, which he has placed in red blood spilling from the Baptist's cut throat. There is considerable empty space in the image, but because the canvas is quite large the figures are approximately life-sized.
According to John Varriano in Caravaggio: the Art of Realism (2006), Caravaggio drew the background for his picture from the depiction of a prison in the Knights of Malta's penal code. Characteristically of his later paintings, the number of props and the detail in the props used is minimal.
Read more about this topic: The Beheading Of Saint John The Baptist (Caravaggio)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Every thing in his composition was little; and he had all the weaknesses of a little mind, without any of the virtues, or even the vices, of a great one.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“There was not a grain of poetry in the whole composition of Lord Fawn, and poetry was what her very soul craved;Mpoetry, together with houses, champagne, jewels, and admiration.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)