The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist

Caravaggio, 1608

Oil on canvas, 361 × 520 cm

St. John's Co-Cathedral

The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist is a painting finished 1608 by the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. It is housed in the St. John's Co-Cathedral of La Valletta, Malta. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (3200x2173, 219 KB) Description: Title: de: Die Enthauptung Johannes des Täufers, für das Oratorium der Kathedrale San Giovanni die Cavalieri in Valletta Technique: de: Öl auf Leinwand Dimensions: de: 361 × 520 cm Country of origin: de: Italien Current location... Caravaggio painted by Ottavio Leoni around 1621. ... Events March 18 - Sissinios formally crowned Emperor of Ethiopia May 14 - Protestant Union founded in Auhausen. ... Adoration, by Peter Paul Rubens: dynamic figures spiral down around a void: draperies blow: a whirl of movement lit in a shaft of light, rendered in a free bravura handling of paint In arts, the Baroque (or baroque) is both a period and the style that dominated it. ... Caravaggio painted by Ottavio Leoni around 1621. ... This article needs to be wikified. ...

This is the most important painting that Caravaggio made in Malta. This is one of Caravaggio's most extraordinary creations, for many it is his greatest masterpiece. It is characterized by a magical balance of all the parts. It is no accident that the artist brings back into the painting a precise reference to the setting, placing behind the figures, as a backdrop, the severe, sixteenth century architecture of the prison building, at the window of which, in a stroke of genius, two figures silently witness the scene (the commentators are thus drawn into the painting, and no longer projected, as in the Martyrdom of St. Matthew, toward the outside). The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (1599-1600) [1] is a painting by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, located in the Contarelli chapel of the church of the French congregation San Luigi Dei Francesi in Rome, Italy. ...

This is a final compendium of Caravaggio's art. Well-known figures return (the old woman, the youth, the nude ruffian, the bearded nobleman), as do Lombard elements. The technical means adhere to the deliberate, programmatic limitation to which Caravaggio adapts them; but amid these soft tones, these dark colours, is an impressive sense of drawing that the artist does not give up, and that is visible even through the synoptic glints of light of his late works. This eminently classical balance, which projects the event beyond contingency, unleashes a harsh drama that is even more effective to the extent that, having given up the "aesthetic of exclamation" forever, Caravaggio limits every external, excessive sign of emotional emphasis. The painter signed in the Baptist's blood: "f (perhaps to understood as fecit rather than frater) michela...". This is the seal he placed on what may well be his greatest masterpiece.