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Your galleryThe Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
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Follow the thin red streams down the wall and across the neat grid of the pavement, then compare them with the executioner’s easy stance.
John’s headless body slumps over the sill of his prison window, and a soldier lowers the head onto a gold platter. The Art Institute of Chicago points to the gap between the bloodshed and the calm faces, and to the executioner sliding his sword back into its sheath. Eleven of the series’ twelve panels survive, six of them in Chicago.
Tempera on panel · 68.6 × 39.1 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Renaissance · Late Gothic and Early Renaissance
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
- Artist
- Giovanni di Paolo (Italian, 1398–1482)
- Date
- 1455–60
- Medium
- Tempera on panel
- Dimensions
- 68.6 × 39.1 cm (27 × 15 3/8 in.); Framed: 82 × 53.4 × 7 cm (32 1/4 × 21 × 2 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.