+ Expand

Dimensions: measurements note 35 1/2 by 32 3/4 in.; 90 by 83.3 cm.

+ Expand

Provenance: King Charles I of England (1600-1649), Hampton Court, by 1649;
Intended for the Commonwealth sale 1649-51, but reserved for Oliver Cromwell and probably thereafter kept at Hampton Court or Whitehall;
Recovered after the Restoration in 1660 for Charles II of England (1630-1685) and certainly at Whitehall by 1666;
By descent in the Royal Collection until after 1736;
Private collection, Scotland;
Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Gentleman"), London, Christie's, December 9, 1994, lot 348, as Studio of Titian, where bought by Colnaghi;
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

+ Expand

Exhibited:

Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, 5 August - 5 December, 2004, pp. 178-9, 437, no. 65, reproduced in colour;
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 18 October 2007 - 6 January 2008; Venice, Accademia, 1 February - 21 April 2008, Der späte Tizian, pp. 338-40, no. 3.17, reproduced.

+ Expand

Literature: A true inventory of the Pictures in Hampton Court Viewed and Apprised yυe 3.4 & 5 of Octobυr 1649, no. 78;
Possibly Colonel William Hawley's inventory of 1660-1 of goods recovered for the Crown, as either no. 37: "A herodias wth ye: St John Bapt: Head in a platter being an Italian peace", or more likely no. 55: "A Harodias with A John Baptist head in A platter and her maide by her":
Inventory of Charles II's Pictures etc., at Whitehall and Hampton Court, circa 1666-7, p. 43, no. 470, in store at Whitehall;
Inventory of James II's Pictures etc., at Whitehall, Windsor, Hampton Court and in the custody of the Queen Dowager, Catherine Braganza, Somerset House, 1688, no. 358, at Whitehall;
Inventory of William III's Pictures etc., at Kensington, 1697 and 1700, in the Gallery;
Inventory of Queen Anne's Pictures at Kensington, Hampton Court, Windsor, St. James's and Somerset House, circa 1705-10, no. 97, in the Queen's Gallery at Windsor;
Inventory of George II, Pictures at Kensington, 1732 and 1736, p. 2 in the Great Drawing Room;
Possibly J. Cosnac, Les Richesses du Palais Mazarin, Paris 1885, p. 416, no. 78, "Hérodes avec la teste de saint Jean, par Tissian";
A. Morassi, "Una Salomè di Tiziano riscoperta" in Pantheon, XXVI, 1968, pp. 456-466;
F. Valcanover, L'Opera Completa di Titian, Milan 1969, pp. 143-135, no. 490, reproduced;
O. Millar, "The Inventories and Valuations of the King's Goods 1649-1651," in The Walpole Society, XLIII, 1972, p. 190, no. 78;
S. Biadene ed., Titian. Prince of Painters, Munich 1990, p. 352, under no. 69;
G. Fage, Le Siècle de Titian, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1993, p. 620, under cat. no. 260;
P. Miller, "Scots expert unveils Titian's lost Salome to the world. First showing for multi-million pound find," in The Herald, 4th August 2004, p. 4;
AA. VV., "Not for an age, but for all time," in Edinburgh Evening News, 3rd August 2004;
T. Cornwell, "Double Delight unveiled at National Gallery as new Age of Titian dawns," in The Scotsman, 4th August 2004, p. 13;
P. Humfrey, in P. Humfrey et al., The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh 2004, pp. 178-9, 436, no. 65, reproduced in colour;
G. Tagliaferro, "La bottega di Tiziano: un percorso critico," in Studi Tizianeschi, IV, 2006, pp. 45, 47, fig. 23;
P. Humfrey, Titian. The Complete Paintings, New York, 2007, p. 329, no. 256, reproduced in colour;
S. Albl in S. Ferino-Pagden, Der spate Tizian und die Sinnlichkeit der Malerei, exhibition catalogue, Vienna 2008, pp. 338-340, no. 3.17

+ Expand

Notes: PROPERTY FROM THE LONDON RESIDENCE OF LUIGI KOELLIKER
This remarkable painting, in which the seductress Salome strains under the weight of John the Baptist's severed head, was painted by Titian in the 1570s and has only recently been rediscovered and restored to the artist's oeuvre, having spent over two hundred years presumed lost. In its spirited execution, enlivened by rapid brushstrokes and the dramatic contrasts of light against dark, the painting embodies every quality of the artist's late style. Since its rediscovery the painting has been included in two major exhibitions of Titian's work, The Age of Titian at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, in 2004 and, more recently, Der späte Tizian which took place at both the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and the Accademia in Venice in 2007-2008. When it last appeared at auction in 1994 (see Provenance) the painting had been both extended on all four sides and substantially overpainted (see fig. 1). Recent restoration of these overpainted areas, together with the removal of the extensions, has revealed a painting of far higher quality than previously suspected and it has subsequently been restored to Titian's oeuvre for the first time since the 18υth century. Further corroboration of Titian's authorship has been wrought by the discovery of Charles I's cipher (see fig. 2) on the reverse and a consequential identification of the painting with an entry in the 1649 Hampton Court Palace inventory (see below). The design is one which the artist used on at least two, and possibly three, further occasions. The pose of the female protagonist mirrors that of Titian's Judith in The Detroit Institute of Arts, also datable to the 1570s (see fig. 3).υ1 In this latter Judith holds the sword in her outstretched right hand and Holofernes' head hangs from the grasp of her left. While Judith is attended by the page boy, as here, the maidservant in the left background is missing. In another version in a New York private collection, this time depicting Salome, the protagonist is shown in a different dress and with John the Baptist's head in a different position, but she is attended by both the pageboy and maidservant. Neither these nor the present work, however, can be considered Titian's first essai with this compositional idea and he seems to have conceived the idea many years previously; another version of the head of Salome/Judith appears, via an X-radiograph, underneath his portrait of the Empress Isabella of Portugal in the Prado, Madrid (see fig. 4).υ2 The portrait of Isabella was completed in 1548, as attested by a letter from Titian to Granvelle in which he states that the portrait of "imperatrize sola" is ready.υ3 Titian thus seems to have experimented with the design as early as the 1540s before abandoning it and only returning to it some twenty to twenty-five years later.υ4 Stylistically the present work is typical of Titian's final years, notably in the juxtaposition of the finely finished jewels that hang around Salome's neck and over her left shoulder, with the rapid, expressive brushstrokes of her drapery. The unfinished appearance of the work is enhanced by several seemingly unresolved areas which have only become apparent with the recent removal of the overpaint. The upper edge of the dish, for example, remains undetermined and several pentimenti are now visible. This "working out" of the design is seen in further detail in an X-Radiograph; originally Titian had wrapped Salome's outstretched right arm in drapery, where now it is naked, and the maidservant's veil previously covered her neck, where now she pulls it back with her right hand (see fig. 5). In its present, original state the composition is at its most dramatic whereas in its artificially extended state (fig. 1) it had mirrored the mise-en-scène of the Detroit Judith and of the New York Salome: where now Salome fills the entire picture plane, touching the upper, left-hand and lower margins, recoiling as she thrusts St John's head to the very forefront, in its previous artificial state, like the Detroit Judith and the New York Salome, the protagonist had been pushed back from the picture plain so that her presence and impact were diminished as she sunk into the expansive dark background.

The painting would have appeared in its present format when part of the Royal Collection. The extensions, which increased the painting's size to 48 ¾ by 39 in.; 123.8 by 99 cm., must have been added after 1667 (and almost certainly after it left the Royal Collection after 1736) since, in Charles II's inventory of that year, the painting is catalogued as measuring 2 feet 11 inches by 2 feet 9 inches (89 by 83.5 cm), and therefore of comparable dimensions to its current situation.

A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE:
The present work is recorded in the inventory of the goods and furnishings of Hampton Court Palace taken during the summer of 1649. The inventory, which was made following an Act in the House of Commons on 23υrd March 1649 that the "personal estate of the late King, the Queen and the Prince of Wales should be inventoried, appraised and sold, with the exception of such goods as the Council should select for the use of the State...",υ5 was the first complete list of Charles I's goods. A previous attempt to list the goods had been undertaken by Abraham van der Doort, Surveyor of the King's pictures, in 1639. The present work does not appear in this list and it is thus likely that it was acquired by the King after 1639. However, given that Van der Doort's four extant manuscripts and the subsequent appendix are somewhat incomplete (in Van der Doort's catalogue of Whitehall, for example, he completely omits the pictures in the Queen's apartments), it is still possible that the present work was part of the collection at that date.υ6 The painting does not appear in George Vertue's reconstruction of Charles I's collection (subsequently completed and published by William Bathoe in 1757), but this is no surprise given that Vertue based his list on the then two extant Van der Doort manuscripts (both now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)υ7 which themselves, given Van der Doort's appalling grasp of English and illegible handwriting, he and Bathoe found nearly impossible to decode and thus often made horrendous errors of judgment in translating from old to modern English.υ8

The 1649 inventories resolutely resolved to list the Royal family's goods and they were undertaken by appointed "Trustees": Fourteen days after the completion of each inventory a copy was to be sent to the Council of State who would decide which goods to reserve for the use of the state, goods which were not to exceed a total value of £10,000. On 25 September 1649 the Commons ordered the Trustees to complete their inventories of Hampton Court and Whitehall, and it is in the inventory of the former that the present lot appears: 78: Herod holding st John head in a platter. By Tytsyan 150: 00: 00: Reserved (HL): with his Highness The inventories vary considerably in detail; where, as with the Titian, pictures are vaguely described, without medium or measurements and often lacking even the artist's name, the description of a cloth of estate on a particularly grand bed at Somerset House occupies more than one side of a folio. Equally, in the entries for plate and regalia the weight of each precious metal is described in detail.υ9 The descriptions of goods at Richmond and Hampton Court are particularly perfunctory, possibly due to their being no previous inventory to base them on. Each item listed is given a single value. The Titian is valued at £150, a huge sum and several times more than the other two Titians listed above it (both £25). For comparison, Raphael's series of cartoons of The Acts of the Apostles, then in the Privy Gallery at Whitehall, were given a total value of £300.υ10 The Act of Sale stated that nothing could be sold until the Council of State had decided what to reserve. Progress was stalled again and again, not least on 17 July 1651 when a second Act proposed a second lot of goods to a value of another £10,000 be set aside for the state. Two months later the trustees could finally proceed with the sale of unreserved goods. Thomas Beauchamp had earlier compiled a list of the goods reserved for the state, the final value of which came to £53,000, far more than the originally intended £10,000. The reserved goods in the first £10,000 worth were to be used exclusively to furnish the rooms and apartments of the Council of State at Whitehall. The present work must have been part of this first tranche given that, in the 1649 inventory, it is listed as "Reserved," and the second £10,000 worth was not selected until 1651. It therefore seems almost certain that the present work, probably acquired by Charles I after 1639 for Hampton Court, was moved to Whitehall circa 1649-51 to decorate the rooms of the Council of State, along with the other reserved goods in the first £10,000 worth. It may have been brought back to Hampton Court in the spring of 1654 when Cromwell moved back there, as is known of some pictures, but there is no evidence to support this and it is not listed in the inventory of goods belonging to the late Oliver Cromwell at Hampton Court, taken in June 1659.υ11 Certainly it was at Whitehall after the Restoration and is recorded there in the inventory of 1666. So, despite the upheaval of Civil War and Commonwealth, it is thus likely to have moved only once, from Hampton Court to Whitehall, during this tumultuous period. The painting underwent greater turmoil in its immediate subsequent history for, although it was still at Whitehall in 1688, by 1697 it had been moved, probably by William III, to Kensington Palace and then, by circa 1705-10, it had been moved again to Windsor (where it hung in the Queen's Gallery) before returning to Kensington by 1732 where it is listed as hanging in the Great Drawing Room. It is however not listed in the complete inventories undertaken circa 1785-90 and must therefore have been sold or disposed of during the preceding fifty years. It is not known if the painting travelled to Scotland at this time, but it surfaced there over two hundred years later in 1994. It is possible that the present work is identifiable with a painting described in a French list of pictures for sale at Somerset House in May 1650: "Hérodes avec la teste de saint Jean, par Tissian".υ12 Previously this latter had been identified with another Salome in the Prado, Madrid, which was considered to have been acquired around this time by the Marqués de Leganés, entering the Spanish royal collection in 1655. Miguel Falomir, however, discovered the Prado work to be almost certainly identifiable with one already recorded in Spain in 1607 in the collection of the Duke of Lerma, and was presumably acquired by Leganés from Lerma's heirs after 1637.υ13 However, what the present work might have been doing in a sale list in 1650, when it had been reserved for the state in 1649, remains unexplained. 1. See H. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian. I. The Religious Paintings, vol. I, London 1969, p. 95, reproduced plate 193.
2. See H. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian. II. The Portraits, vol. II, London 1971, pp. 110-111, reproduced plate 147.
3. See M.R. Zarco del Valle, "Unveröffentlichte Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kunstbestrebungen Karl V. und Philipp II," in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, vol. VII, 1888, p. 222.
4. With the discovery of this ghost painting underneath it however, it has been questioned whether the portrait of the Empress Isabella is indeed one of two posthumous portraits painted by Titian for her husband Charles V in the 1540s, as has always been presumed. The portrait is perhaps a studio replica painted for her son Philip II in the 1560s. The re-use of an existing canvas would, furthermore, suggest that the portrait was painted in Titian's studio in Venice and not in Augsburg in the 1540s, as is usually thought.
5. Commons Journals, vol. VI, 1803, p. 172.
6. Even as Surveyor of the King's pictures Van der Doort still had only limited access to the places where the King's pictures hung and only then at "convenient times." Access was further hindered by those who considered themselves as having a better right to the care of certain objects, such as Thomas Carew, Sir David Murray of Gorthy, the Earl of Arundel and Inigo Jones; Carew, for example, flatly refused to hand over certain keys to Van der Doort, probably because some of the objects supposedly held therein had been illegally sold or dispersed. The painting does also not appear in the list of pictures by Titian drawn up by Van der Doort, also in 1639 (Ms Ash. 1514: see O. Millar (ed.), "Abraham van der Doort's catalogue of the collections of Charles I," in the thirty-seventh volume of the Walpole Society, 1958-60, Glasgow 1960, pp. 183-4).
7. The two other manuscripts (British Museum and Windsor) had not yet come to light.
8. For example, they transcribed Cornelis Poelenburgh for Abraham Blyenburch or Corragio John for Cornelis Johnson.
9. Given its predilection for material worth it is not surprising that, on 9 August 1649, the Commons ordered the melting down of the gold and silver on all regalia and the selling of their jewels "for the best Advantage of the Commonwealth." See Commons Journals, vol. VI, 1803, p. 276.
10. Millar, 1972, p. 72, no. 61.
11. See E.P.A. Law, The History of Hampton Court Palace. Appendix C: Inventory of Goods Mostly Claimed as Belonging to Cromwell at Hampton Court Palace in 1659, 1888, p. 277ff.
12. See G.-J. Cosnac, Les Richesses du Palais Mazarin, Paris 1885, p. 416.
13. See S. Schroth, The Private Picture Collection of the Duke of Lerma, Ph.D. dissertation, New York 1990, p. 83.