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Caravaggio painted this around 1609 as a man in serious trouble. The year before, the Knights of Malta had expelled him from their order after a brawl, and he was moving between Naples and Sicily trying to undo the damage. His early biographer Bellori says he sent a Salome like this one to the Grand Master of Malta, Alof de Wignacourt, as a kind of peace offering, hoping to win back the favor he had lost. It shows. There is no triumph in it. Salome turns her face away from the platter, the old servant beside her stares down at the head, and the whole canvas sits in quiet, exhausted shadow. He would be dead within a year, still trying to get home to Rome.