Herodias and Salome with the Head of John the Baptist

Bartolomeo Coriolano was a seventeenth-century Italian engraver and draughtsman. He was one of only a few chiaroscuro practitioners in the seventeenth century. Presumably around 1621, Coriolano joined the study of Guido Reni and worked with him first in Bologna and later in Rome. Their collaborative output reached its height between 1637 and 1642, with Coriolano producing prints after Reni’s designs and both artists assuming the role of publisher for various printed states. The biblical story depicted in “Herodias and Salome with the Head of John the Baptist” was a popular subject for artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.