Beheading of St. John the Baptist, Flemish school, late 16th - early 17th century

Salomé, during Herod Antipas' banquet, receives the head of the Baptist from a servant. The scene represents the moment after the beheading, just before the head is offered on a plate to the mother Herodias and to Herod himself.

The painting still has no Rembrandtian influences, but it is stylistically more similar to the great painters of the Flemish sixteenth century, such as Lucas Cranach the Elder and Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, therefore a dating is established between the end of the sixteenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth century, slightly backdating it with respect to what is expressed in the label on the back.

The painting is already present in the collection of the Marquises of Cassis.