The painting was acquired by Banco de San Carlos in 1787. According to a report drafted in 1868, it was brought from Italy by Mengs and placed in the bank’s oratory, where it was displayed as a work by “Boarchino”, meaning Guercino. As Pérez Sánchez pointed out, however, Mengs had already died in 1784, and the picture had nothing to do with the painter from Bologna. The scholar considered it to be a Tuscan-Florentine work of the early seventeenth century on the basis above all of the female figure, and he detected a certain stiffness of execution that suggested to him that it might be a copy of a lost original.

The picture must be related to the circle of Giovanni Baglione. Preserved at the Hermitage is a Saint John the Baptist that has been convincingly attributed to that painter by Papi and Porzio, and also a bust of a man that was subsequently also attributed to him by Nicolaci along with the saint. These two figures are those of the martyr and the executioner in the Banco de San Carlos painting, which was unknown to the foreign experts.

Baglione creates a completely new representation of the subject. The executioner, who has not yet even unsheathed his sword, has just noticed Salome’s gesture to commence the beheading. The young woman holds the charger ready for the head of the resigned saint, who is meditating on the cross. Discernible on its scroll is the sacrificial title given to Jesus by the Baptist: “Ecce Agnus Dei”.

Nevertheless, the exchange of looks between the executioner and Salome is somewhat unconvincing, and the figure of the young woman could have been added to a pre-existing composition. Indeed, the Baptist’s body seems rather small in comparison with that of his executioner, though this could also be done deliberately as a way to heighten the sense of the saint’s defencelessness, as the scale of the figures in the Hermitage painting is the same as that in the Banco de España work.

As Kagané has explained, the Hermitage canvases were acquired as works by Navarrete el Mudo by Tsar Alexander I from the banker William Coeswelt in Amsterdam in 1814. The Danish banker had acquired them in his turn during his stay in Spain some years earlier. Papi dates the painting of the Baptist to the first decade of the seventeenth century, the period of what critics have called the painter’s “Caravaggesque interlude”, and Porzio has noted its relation to an Ecce Homo at the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Ferrara which he attributes very convincingly to the Roman artist. Nicolaci unhesitatingly assigns the male bust at the Hermitage to Baglione because, he says, it can be seen as close to his manner and his male types during the first decade of the century, although the facial features are in this case accentuated for expressive purposes. The executioner at the Russian museum was cut out on all four sides from a larger picture, and his dimensions are the same as those of the figure in the Banco de España painting, so the Hermitage piece is probably a fragment of a canvas with the same composition.

To judge by the photographs, the paintings at the Hermitage are the work of two different hands. By contrast with the manifest quality of the Baptist, some details of the figure of the executioner, such as the lack of grading in the shadow on the right shoulder, or the shaded eye, excessively deformed by improbable foreshortening, point to an inferior artist. If this last figure is compared with its twin in the picture in Spain, the latter is clearly richer in execution, with more fluent brushwork and small highlights to enliven the lips, nose and eyes. It is evident from a comparison of the two figures of the Baptist that the stylemes of Baglione’s faces, such as the elongated and upwardly curved eyes with very pronounced eyelids, appear only in the Hermitage picture.

The strong chiaroscuro and the presence of some timid naturalist details, such as the dirt on the figures’ fingernails, indicate that the work was probably conceived by Baglione during his so-called “Caravaggesque interlude” in the first decade of the century, but it is difficult to be more precise owing to the variety of stylistic options in Baglione’s repertoire at that time. The figure of the executioner thus tries superficially to approach Caravaggio in the emphasis on his facial expression, but his disproportionate forearm relates to the colossal late Mannerist types of the Gifts of Constantine painted at San Giovanni in Laterano in 1600. On the other hand, however, the Baptist is related to the types of the Ecce Homo of 1604 in Ferrara and of the Christ Meditating on the Passion of 1606 at the Galleria Borghese, so his invented composition could be seen to lie between the two extremes.

As regards the execution, the distance of the picture in Spain from works as sophisticated as those mentioned is so great that it must be a product of the master’s workshop or, more probably, a copy, as Nicolaci has suggested verbally without having seen the work in person, given that there is no evidence that Baglione had any assistants during the first decade of the century.

There is no doubt that the difference between the delicate shades of light in the barred window of the picture in Russia and its summary resolution in the one in Spain is highly significant in this regard, and the same may be said of the succinct brushwork and the rather rigid folds of the executioner’s clothing. A higher quality is apparent in the figure of Salome, whose garments are painted with a much greater chromatic richness than is appreciable in the rest of the figures.

Gonzalo Redín Michaus

The Beheading of St John the Baptist is one of a group of religious works from the Banco de San Carlos that now form part of the Banco de España Collection. Traditionally, the painting was thought to have been acquired in Italy by Anton Raphael Mengs for the newly created institution. However, the timing does not appear to match this version, since Mengs (who was born in Bohemia) died in Rome in 1779, three years before the bank was incorporated in 1782. The only possibility that would support this thesis — that Mengs fulfilled the commission over three years before the bank's foundation — seems implausible. Whatever its origins, it somehow appeared in the Banco de San Carlos. It must have been attributed to Il Guercino for some time, given that in a report by the Bank's archivist Tomás Varela, dated 1868, it is cited as being 'by Il Boarchino', a non-existent name that can only be an incorrect transliteration from memory of 'Guercino'.

In fact, although it is Italian and dates from the first half of the seventeenth century, there is nothing about the models or the technique to suggest that it was by Il Guercino. Nonetheless, this attribution was repeated in several publications until it was finally corrected in the first edition of the Banco de España's catalogue of paintings in 1985. There is little information about the work that enables us to make an in-depth analysis, although it is probably a Florentine-Tuscan work from the early seicento. The juvenile figure in the middle ground is very characteristic in this regard. However, there is a certain harshness about the execution that requires us for the moment to consider it as a copy of an unidentified original.

Comment updated by Carlos Martín.

Alfonso Pérez Sánchez