The Death of John the Baptist
Virgil Solis, 1565 · Mark 6:27
The passage
And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison,
Mark 6:27
About this woodcut
A palace of columns and arches. Herod and Herodias sit at table on the left, small and comfortable. A soldier stands over a kneeling figure in the centre. On the right a young woman waits, and through the arch behind her, at the far back of the picture, the execution is happening.
Solis puts the killing in the distance and the dinner in the foreground, and that is the whole argument. The most terrible thing in the frame is the smallest. Everyone at the table is looking at the girl rather than at what has been ordered for her.
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