CAIRO, Francesco del

This painting is one of the best inventions of the painter’s early years, still marked chiefly by the expressive tension of the Lombard figurative culture of the turn of the century, and particularly of the models of Cerano and Morazzone.

While the image of Salome alone with John the Baptist’s head is quite common in Renaissance painting, the portrayal of Herodias in the same scenario is far rarer. Nevertheless, the theme was one of Cairo’s favourites and in his early years he replicated it at least four times. As is the case in the other versions, in the Vicenza canvas the painter offers a very singular interpretation of the scene, characterized by the portrayal of Herodias swooning. Her hand is outstretched towards the saint’s severed head, which is in turn distinguished by the surprising motif of his tongue pierced by a needle.

In this painting, Cairo made the macabre subject even more disturbing through dramatic lighting and the vivid realism with which he portrayed Herodias swooning in ecstasy as she mutilates the tongue that spoke against her.

St Agnes of Rome (291-304) is a virgin-martyr. She suffered martyrdom at the age of thirteen during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian.

Agnes was buried beside the Via Nomentana in Rome. Her bones are currently conserved beneath the high altar in the church of Sant’Angese fuori le mura in Rome, which was built over the catacomb that held her tomb. Her skull is preserved in the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone in Rome’s Piazza Navona.

Many of Cairo’s works are eccentric depictions of religious ecstasies; the saints appear liquefied and contorted by piety. He often caps them with exuberant, oriental turbans.

The artist executed several variants of this theme.

The subject of this canvas is rarely treated in painting. It illustrates the martyrdom of St Euphemia, described in detail by Jacopo da Voragine in the Golden Legend. The episode takes place at the time of Diocletian and the early Christian martyrs. After several unsuccessful attempts to eliminate Euphemia, who did not wish to abjure her Christian faith, she was thrown “into a pit where there were three wild beasts so ferocious that they would swallow any man”, but amazingly they did her no harm. An executioner was then sent to drive “his sword into Euphemia’s side, thus making her a martyr for Christ. To reward the headsman for his service, the judge draped him in a silk garment and girded him with a gold belt, but as the man went out, he was snatched by a lion and devoured by the same”.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, this painting was attributed to Titian or Veronese.