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Your galleryThe Feast of Herod (recto)
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Find Herod in his large cap at the right, hand at his mouth, then look across the platter for Herodias and her fork.
Rubens drew this sheet to prepare his painting The Feast of Herod, now in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, and drawings like it also guided the many pupils in his Antwerp studio. Salome uncovers a platter holding the head of John the Baptist, Herod shrinks back, and Herodias, smiling, reaches for the dish with a fork in her hand. At the top Rubens wrote a working note, usually read as “Herodias somewhat higher.”
pen and brown ink, with black and red chalk, touched with white gouache · Sheet: 27.2 x 47.2 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Baroque
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Feast of Herod (recto)
- Artist
- Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)
- Date
- c. 1637–38
- Medium
- pen and brown ink, with black and red chalk, touched with white gouache
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 27.2 x 47.2 cm (10 11/16 x 18 9/16 in.); Secondary Support: 27.6 x 47.3 cm (10 7/8 x 18 5/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Delia E. Holden and L. E. Holden Funds
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.