Attributed to Jan Mostaert, 'The Head of Saint John the Baptist', probably 1520s

A severed head lies on a gilded platter resting on a blue tasselled cushion. This is the head of Saint John the Baptist,who was executed on the orders of King Herod (Mark 6: 17–29). Child and adult angels gather around it in grief. The head and the angels are in a gilded niche which may once have looked as if it was continuous with the original frame (now lost). Two roundels and the oblong along the bottom seem to have been intended to look like gilded and painted wood carvings. They show episodes from the saint’s life.

The cult of the Baptist was very popular in France, the Low Countries, England and Germany in the Middle Ages and Periods and styles: Renaissance. The saint’s head was one of several relics brought back from Constantinople to Amiens in 1206, and it attracted a large number of pilgrims. Paintings and reliefs of the head, often with angels carrying the charger, were popular; in England alabaster ‘Saint John’s heads’ were made in great numbers. Paintings of John’s head on a platter, such as The Head of Saint John the Baptist, also became popular in Italy in the sixteenth century. The Order of Saint John used the image of the head on its seals. Five of the angels in this picture wear a Maltese cross; it may have been made for a Knight of the Order, who, from 1530, were also known as the Knights of Malta.

Jan Mostaert worked largely in Haarlem, and this picture was perhaps painted for the Haarlem Commandery of the Knights of Malta. It may have been the same ‘picture of Saint John’s head’ which in 1572 was in the small office of the convent.