Salome and the Medusa

Salome and the Medusa

Caravaggio's Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist was painted at the end of his career, around 1609-1610. He had explored much the same idea in his earlier Judith Beheading Holofernes and David with the Head of Goliath, and his Medusa paintings like this one from 1590:

In the Uffizi, Florence

Rubens went him one better with this extravaganza below of around 1617-18. This is in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Rubens-Medusa