A painting by Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens long thought to be lost could sell for as much as $35 million when it returns to auction in January.
Key Facts
“Salome Presented With the Severed Head of Saint John the Baptist” is believed to have been painted around 1609 after Rubens returned to his native Flanders from Italy, where he lived for nearly a decade. The painting depicts the biblical scene when John the Baptist’s severed head was presented to Salome, King Herod’s daughter-in-law, who requested that he be killed.
The painting’s subject was a common theme in 17th-century paintings, according to Sotheby’s, when the popularity of art depicting “dangerous and powerful women” as a cautionary tale led artists to depict other biblical figures in a similar light, like Rubens’ painting “Little is known about the origins of “Salome Presented With the Severed Head of Saint John the Baptist,” but according to Sotheby’s, the painting was documented in Spanish royal inventories from 1666 until 1700, which indicates...
The painting was believed to have been lost until it was rediscovered in a French family’s collection, where it had for decades been misattributed to a follower of Rubens instead of the artist himself, George Wachter, chairman of Sotheby’s North America told