Salomé avec la tête de saint Jean-Baptiste

Caravaggio painted this around 1607, and by then he was a man on the run. He had killed an opponent in a Rome brawl the year before, fled south to Naples, and was working fast with a price on his head. That flight is in the picture. There is no palace and no crowd, just four figures pulled out of deep shadow by a raking light. The executioner lowers John the Baptist's severed head onto Salome's dish, and she turns her face away from the thing she asked for. Beside her an old servant clasps her hands, the one openly grieving figure. Some early writers thought Caravaggio sent a Salome like this one to the Knights of Malta, hoping to win back their favour after they threw him out of the Order.