Cutting the Gaze. Salome in Andrea Solario’s Oeuvre, c. 1465–1524

In this essay, I consider the northern Italian iconographic interpretations of Salome and the head of St. John the Baptist in Andrea Solario’s oeuvre (c. 1465-1524). Solario’s iconographic innovations provide an excellent case study for understanding how Salome was staged as an intermediary between the Baptist’s head and the beholder. I also discuss Solario’s ability to unite the pictorial tradition of Salome with the genre of the early modern portrait on the one hand and with the iconographic tradition of the paragone debate on the other. Solario’s innovations emancipated Salome from the biblical narrative, transforming her into a means of showing what painting, when anchored in gaze, flesh, and death, is capable of.