Cleveland Museum of Art

Salome Receiving John the Baptist’s Head on a Platter (folio 112 verso), from a Mirror of Holiness (Mir’at al-quds) of Father Jerome Xavier

Date: 1602–4
Medium: Gum tempera, ink, color, and gold on paper
Culture: Mughal India, Allahabad, made for Prince Salim (1569–1627)
Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 163649

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Herod, King of Judea, sits on a Mughal-style throne as his wife’s daughter Salome reaches for the freshly severed head of John the Baptist. John had offended Herod’s wife, so she took revenge by having her daughter seduce Herod into granting her this wish. Salome is depicted modestly in this painting, and the court musician at the lower left looks on in disgust. The lion head capitals on the pillars above Herod are upside down, seemingly in disapproval of the debauched king. Column capitals in Herod’s palace have angels seated on upside-down lion heads.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page

See at Cleveland Museum of Art

Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: John L. Severance Fund
Provenance: before 1930s–2005: An Indian family in Great Britain, whose grandfather brought the manuscript to England in the 1930s or 1940s | 2005: (Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch Ltd., London, England, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 2005–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH