St John Altarpiece, 1455-60

In the second half of the 1450s, not long after the execution of the St Columba Altarpiece, Rogier painted a smaller retable, probably intended for a side altar or a private chapel, the St John Altarpiece. It may be identical with an altarpiece by Rogier dedicated to John the Baptist and said to have been given to the church of St James, Bruges, by the merchant Battista Agnelli, a native of Pisa. The center of the retable shows John the Baptist baptizing Christ in the Jordan, with the naming of John to the left. In the scene of the beheading of John to the right, Salome is receiving the decapitated head after performing a seductive dance before her father - at her mother's instigation - to persuade him to order John's execution.

The altarpiece, like the much older Miraflores Altarpiece (also in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin), consists of three panels of the same size firmly mounted together in a frame. The work is not therefore a triptych, but an altarpiece that cannot be folded.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 48 minutes):
Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantata, BWV 51