(Castello di Valsolda 1655–1716)
Herode and Herodias receive the head of Saint John the Baptist,
oil on canvas, 90 x 137 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

Literature:
A. Morandotti, Paolo Pagani: il ciclo Leoni Montanari e altre suggestioni, in: Verona Illustrata, 1993, p. 108, fig. 69;
A. Morandotti, Paolo Pagani e i Pagani di Castello Valsolda, Lugano 2000, p. 137, mentioned under ‘Festino di Erode’

An animated moment during the course of a banquet serves as the focus of this painting. In a theatrical manner Pagani frames the centre of the scene with male figures set in the foreground and seen in silhouette. The figure in profile to the right, wearing a plumed helmet, holds a severed head which he offers to the sovereign on the left who is recognisable by his crown and sceptre.

This painting is an important example of the Paolo Pagani’s production, revealing him capable of coupling the inheritance of his Lombard education, refined by the example of the masters of the early seventeenth century (especially of Giulio Cesare Procaccini, referred to here by the three bearded elders in the foreground), with the new Venetian influences absorbed during his residency in Venice. This work can be dated around the final decade of the seventeenth century, as can be ascertained by its stylistic similarities to his other works of this period, such as the Idolatry of Solomon in a private collection (see F. Bianchi, Paolo Pagani, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1998, pp. 118-119, no. 10) and the Fall of the Giants (see F. Bianchi, Ibid., pp. 132-122, no. 16).

This scene, interpreted in an entirely personal manner by the painter, depicts the presentation of the head of Saint John the Baptist to King Herod and his wife Herodias. Typically, this scene, following the Biblical text, would be represented by Salome presenting the severed head to her parents, however in this instance she is absent and the executioner offers the Baptist’s head directly to Herod and Herodias, the latter’s gestures seemingly reflecting her shocked disapproval at the horrific act.

Paolo Pagani was born at Valsolda, a small town on the shores of Lake Lugano. During his youth he moved to Venice in search of commissions, arriving there in 1667–68, and remaining until 1690. In 1685 his name appears in the register of the guild or fraglia of Venetian painters and in 1697 he returned to Valsolda, where he executed the cycle of frescoes in the church of San Martino. Towards the end of his life he worked in Milan: his altarpiece representing Saint Liborio healing the infirm (1712) for the church of San Marco is a work of particular importance from the final phase of his career.