A year before his death, Henri Regnault painted Salome, the biblical temptress, daughter of Herod, the governor of Judea, who murdered John the Baptist. In the Salon of 1870, this painting was sensational, but much of its fame is attributed to when it came to America in 1912. Salome looks blissfully unaware of her doings, her hair ruffled and untamed, with her clothes barely clinging to her, as if about to fall off any moment. Her hands hold a dagger and a platter where John the Baptist’s head would lie. Initially, Regnault was supposed to make the Italian model an African woman, whose culture he was not unfamiliar with due to his many travels abroad. The frilly skirt that is translucent shows her legs, or at least the outline of them. Her shoes are loose as her feet arch and caress each other. Despite this active provocativeness, her expression is one of genuine innocence and obliviousness, watching us with a soft smile. It’s as if the body is saying three different stories. Her head and neck were one of innocence and contentment, her hands showing fatigue and the weight of murder she holds rather firmly, and her legs showing subtle signs of temptation. Her name was derived from “Shlomith” in Hebrew, which meant “she who brings peace and tranquillity”. Some texts also say her name could have been derived from Queen Salome Alexandra, who was a powerful and revered monarch of the Hasmonean Dynasty (way before the Herodian Dynasty took control), and it was very common for Jewish mothers to also name their daughters that. The twisted part is this, that in the original text, the Greek version of Mark, Salome is called a korasion, which means a young girl of 12 years old. And there is no textual evidence in the Bible that her dance was a provocation to her father, Herod, but rather that it pleased (ēresen) the king and his guests. Only later does this term “ēresen” become hyper-sexualised by male commentators. The Gospel of Mark even further shows that Salome is the least guilty in the murder of John the Baptist, where she’s just an innocent, compliant child who follows her mother’s instructions. She demands John the Baptist’s head is amusing too, as she says it is to be done “at once… on a platter.” Herod Antipas’s political paranoia makes him take the request seriously, and hence the execution of John the Baptist. Only later, with 19th-century Western art, does Salome dissociate from her original innocent character to that of a ‘temptress’ archetype. Perhaps it is this reason why Salome is portrayed here as a mix of innocence and subtle provocation.

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