Scenes from the events around the death of John were an extremely common subject in art. \u00a0According to the\u00a0Synoptic Gospels, Herod, who was\u00a0tetrarch, or sub-king, of\u00a0Judea\u00a0under the Roman Empire, had imprisoned John the Baptist because he reproved Herod for divorcing his wife and unlawfully taking\u00a0Herodias, the wife of his brother\u00a0Herod Philip I.<\/p>\n
On Herod’s birthday, Herodias’s daughter Salome danced before the king and his guests. Her dancing pleased Herod so much that in his drunkenness he promised to give her anything she desired, up to half of his kingdom. When the daughter asked her mother what she should request, she was told to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Although Herod was appalled by the request, he reluctantly agreed and had John executed in the prison.<\/p>\n
The painting of Fabritius shows the scene when\u00a0the head of Saint John is presented to Salome, on a platter.<\/p>\n
Carel Fabritius\u00a0studied in the early 1640s he at Rembrandt’s studio in\u00a0Amsterdam. Of all Rembrandt’s pupils, Fabritius was the only one to develop his own artistic style.<\/p>\n
In the early 1650s he moved to\u00a0Delft, and joined the Delft\u00a0painters’ guild\u00a0in 1652. Unfortunately he died young, caught in the\u00a0explosion of the Delft gunpowder magazine\u00a0on October 12, 1654, which destroyed a quarter of the city, along with his studio and many of his paintings. Only about a dozen paintings have survived.<\/p>\n
Source: Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scenes from the events around the death of John were an extremely common subject in art. \u00a0According to the\u00a0Synoptic Gospels, Herod, who was\u00a0tetrarch, or sub-king, of\u00a0Judea\u00a0under the Roman Empire, had imprisoned John the Baptist because he reproved Herod for divorcing his wife and unlawfully taking\u00a0Herodias, the wife of his brother\u00a0Herod Philip I. On Herod’s birthday, … Continue reading Beheading of Saint John the Baptist<\/span>