Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts

Book of Hours
France, Paris, ca. 1460
MS M.282 fol. 124v

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John Baptist: Beheading, and Herod Antipas: Feast -- Salome, wearing jewelled headdress, stands and holds charger. Beside her, executioner (?), with sword belted at his waist, bends forward to pick up bleeding head of John the Baptist, on ground beside bleeding body. Prison to right. In background, in banquent room, servant carries roasted bird on plate toward draped trestle table, behind which sit Herodias, wearing veiled hennin, Herod Antipas, wearing crowned hat, and man, wearing headdress. On the table are pitchers, plates, and food items.
Margins with floreate and scroll ornament, inhabited in left margin by man, kneeling on knee and raising spade or axe above flapping duck held in his left hand; and in lower margin by clothed bear (?), with sword belted at waist, standing on two legs atop fantastic animal and stabbing it in the mouth with spear.