Salome with the Head of John the Baptist

Gustave Moreau's Salome with the Head of John the Baptist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of several versions of this subject he produced, the most famous being the large Apparition of 1876. Salome obsessed Moreau: the femme fatale who demands the head of the prophet represented for him a fundamental duality of sacred and profane, innocence and depravity. His treatment transformed the biblical subject into an orientalist fantasy of extraordinary visual opulence, influencing Huysmans's description in Against the Grain and establishing Salome as a defining fin-de-siècle icon. The Metropolitan's version from 1876 is among his most important works in American collections, representing Symbolism at its most concentrated.

Moreau builds the composition with his characteristic obsessive layering — jeweled surfaces created through repeated glazing, opaque passages, and encrusted pigment. The architecture is elaborately decorated with motifs drawn from Assyrian, Egyptian, and Byzantine sources combined into a fantasy setting. Rich golds, crimsons, and deep blues dominate the palette.