Salome receives the Head of John the Baptist

By the early 1640s this canvas was already in England, and the proof is in Liverpool. William Dobson, the English painter who would soon be working for Charles I at his wartime court in Oxford, made a close copy of it, now in the Walker Art Gallery. Stom had painted the original in Rome, probably around 1630 to 1632. The executioner holds the head of John the Baptist over the dish Salome raises, and a boy thrusts a torch forward so that the dead face comes out of the dark. An old servant stares in shock. Salome shows no fear at all. The scholar and collector Denis Mahon bought it in 1952 and lent it to the National Gallery from 1999, and in 2013 his trust gave it outright. It hangs in Room 24.