GIOVANNI BATTISTA CARACCIOLO, called BATTISTELLO CARACCIOLO (Naples, 1578 – 1635) - Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist (c. 1610–1620)

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GRAND MARCH AUCTION OF OLD MASTERS AND COLONI...

By Templum Fine Art Auctions

Mar 25, 2026

Set Reminder 2026-03-25 10:00:00 2026-03-25 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : GRAND MARCH AUCTION OF OLD MASTERS AND COLONIAL ART https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/templum-fine-art-auctions/grand-march-auction-of-old-masters-and-colonial-art-22766
AUCTION · 25 MARCH · 3:00 PM EXHIBITION OPEN FROM 13 MARCH Templum Fine Art Auctions info@templumauctions.com

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• Lot Description
  Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 117 x 140 cm. We thank Professor Nicola Spinosa for his help and advice in cataloging this work. The composition depicts the biblical episode of Salome displaying the head of Saint John the Baptist, as recounted in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and also in Flavius ​​Josephus's Jewish Antiquities. According to the story, Salome, daughter of Herodias, after her famous dance before Herod Antipas, receives the head of the Baptist as her reward. John the Baptist had been imprisoned for publicly denouncing the monarch's conduct. The theme was widely disseminated in European painting from the Renaissance onward, reaching particular dramatic intensity within the context of Caravaggesque naturalism in the early 17th century. Born in Naples, and most likely trained there as well, Battistello Caracciolo adopted with extraordinary speed the new style introduced in Naples by Caravaggio from 1606 onwards. Within a decade, and certainly before 1615, he had fully assimilated this style, reinterpreting it with a force and coherence that make him, for critics today, the most important of the southern Caravaggisti from a stylistic point of view. The present work, known in art history as the "Salome Peltzer," is one of the finest examples of this full maturity and has been dated by Stefano Causa to the early years of the second decade of the 17th century. Battistello addressed this subject in at least three other versions—one in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, another in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville, and yet another in a private collection—all different in their approach, though clearly derived, to a greater or lesser extent, from the inventiveness and intensity of this composition, often considered one of the most authentically Caravaggesque in his entire oeuvre. The figure in the upper left, understood as either a prisoner or a disciple of Jesus, has been linked to Caravaggio's Beheading of the Baptist, painted in Malta in 1608, while the ...
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