The Head of Saint John the Baptist

Solari signed and dated this small picture in 1507, the year he left Milan for France to work for Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, chief minister to Louis XII, and the museum thinks it may have been painted for him. King Herod had John the Baptist beheaded, and the head was brought to the girl Salome on a platter. Here there is no Salome and no palace. The head lies on a footed dish on a plain wooden table, eyes closed, curls spilling over the rim. In 1998 the writer Julia Kristeva chose it for an exhibition on severed heads that she organised at the Louvre. Look at the gleaming base and stem. The reflections there are said to reproduce the painter's own features, and in 2019 the museum showed the panel again in an exhibition about the figure of the artist.