Salomè con la testa di San Giovanni Battista

Titian returned to this grim subject more than once across his long life. The head on the platter is John the Baptist, executed at the request of Salome, who had danced for King Herod and, prompted by her mother, asked for it as her reward. By the time of this late version, around 1570, Titian was roughly 80 and painting in the loose, smoky manner of his final years, where forms seem to gather out of the brushwork rather than being drawn in line. He was still the most sought-after painter in Europe, working in Venice for popes and for the Spanish king. A few years later, in 1576, he died in that city during an outbreak of plague that carried off a large part of its population.