The exhibition “Salome, Henner and Moreau confronting the myth”, on the Nationwide Museum of Jean-Jacques Henner, in Paris, which takes position from February 18 to June 22, 2026, items to the general public about thirty artwork and drawings depicting the biblical dancer, the incarnation of feminine seduction.
Quick passages from the Gospels display Salome at a party for her great-uncle Herod Antipas, the governor, or tetrarch, of Galilee and Perea, north and east of Judea, on behalf of the Romans, about 29 AD.
The younger woman “came to dance and please Herod and his guests” recounts the Gospel in line with Mark (Mk 6, 22). To ensure that her to conform to make a spectacle of herself, Antipas promised a robust praise to his great-niece: “Whatever you ask of me, I will give you, even if it is half of my kingdom,” he confident her.
An enormous over-promise. Salome, who isn’t an blameless younger woman, will have the benefit of this. When her provider is over, she asks as pay “on a plate, the head of John the Baptist.” The prophet, the forerunner of Christ for Christians, is then beheaded at the orders of Antipas to grant the adolescent’s request.
Exhibition poster.
The Gospel tale could be very quick. Nonetheless, it produces robust psychological pictures within the readers’ minds, appropriate for having a pipe dream. There are 3 intently comparable substances: younger woman, dance, homicide.
Thus a princess whom we consider to be in particular fascinating, or her great-uncle should not have insisted an excessive amount of on seeing her dance, is succesful, towards all expectancies, of inflicting the execution of a holy guy. This ambivalence bureaucracy the motive force in the back of the “Salome” fable that connects want and dying.
Bacchante dance, Derveni crater, 4th century BC, Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. Wikimedia, Michael Greenhalgh, CC BI The Conceited Bacchante
Later, Saint Augustine (354-430) helped popularize the nature of Salome, in a paradoxical method, since his intention used to be to sentence a girl who used to be regarded as conceited. Describing the frenzied erotic dance, he definitively establishes what till then had handiest been instructed by means of the Gospels: “Sometimes she bends to the side and puts her side out before the eyes of the spectators, sometimes, in the presence of these men, she parades her breasts” (16th sermon of St. John the Baptist).
On the time the writer wrote, polytheistic cults had been nonetheless provide within the Roman Empire. Augustine definitely recollects pictures of Bacchantes, those ladies from Greek mythology, fans of Bacchus or Dionysus and depicted as wild dancers.
On a big gilded bronze vase, found out in Derveni, within the north of Greece, these days within the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, we will see a delirious bacchante, whose naked chest jumps over the tunic. The curves of her frame don’t fail to excite the satyr, a hybrid being of half-man, half-goat, whose phallus stands to the left of the dancer.
Within the fifteenth century, the Italian painter Benozzo Gozzoli used to be impressed by means of those historic artwork, as proven by means of the material actions of his Salome. Lured, Herod Antipas puts his proper hand on his center, the seat of affection’s want, whilst with the opposite he tightly grips the phallic knife pointing upwards.
Benozzo Gozzoli, Los angeles Danse de Salome, 1461. Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington. Wikimedia Los angeles danseuse oriental
Within the nineteenth century, the determine of the traditional vacchan merged with that of the abdominal dancer, whilst the Orientalist motion triumphed within the West in artwork and literature. Gustave Flaubert, in The Herodias, one among his Trois Contes (1877), performs a significant position on this means of identity. To explain Salome, he attracts inspiration from the Egyptian dancers Kuchuk Hanem and Azizeh whom he met all over a shuttle to the Nile Valley:
“With half-closed eyelids, she arched her waist, rocked her stomach with waves of swelling, her two breasts trembled.”
Flaubert’s Salome was the prototype of the oriental dancer who would fascinate Western audiences for a number of a long time.
In 1891, Oscar Wilde used to be impressed by means of Flaubert in his play Salome, whilst inventing the theme of the dance with seven veils, an oriental striptease in different phases, which used to be set to track by means of Richard Strauss in 1905.
Gustave Moreau, Salome taking part in ahead of Herod. Oil on canvas started in 1874. Musee Gustave-Moreau, Paris. Grand Palace. RMN/Rene-Gabriel Ojeda
The paintings of Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) takes position on this context of Western Orientalism, connecting eroticism and exoticism. Added to that is the archaeological discovery of historic Egypt, particularly the frescoes depicting banquets, musicians and bare dancers at the partitions of historic tombs.
Egyptian Musicians and Dancers, fresco from the Tomb of Nebamon, c. 1350 BC. Wikimedia
Gustave Moreau produced a number of artwork and drawings depicting Salome, in particular Salome Dancing, begun in 1874 and retouched by means of the Eighteen Nineties, which is likely one of the artist’s masterpieces. The princess, swinging, takes to the air her lengthy blue material; she raises her left hand, an indication that she is set to start out her dance.
L’œil Oudjat, dit l’œil d’Horus, Egypt. Wikimedia, Jeff Dahl, CC BI
If her frame is encouraged by means of the Venuses of Greco-Roman sculpture, with small breasts, huge hips and the whiteness of her nudity that conjures up marble, the patterns that duvet it, like tattoos, immediately discuss with Pharaonic Egypt.
There we discover Egyptian cobras, the lotus flower, amulets within the form of the attention of the goddess, which might be related to the god Horus, and even the winged scarab, a logo of resurrection, and ram’s heads that invoke Amun.
The overprinting method itself will have been instructed to the painter by means of mummies of Egyptian ladies with tattooed our bodies, unearthed because the nineteenth century within the Nile Valley.
The result’s a piece through which, in spite of the elimination of the princess’s foliage, enigma and thriller in the end be triumphant.
Formative years, attractiveness and thriller
Within the Eighteen Nineties, Jean-Jacques Henner (1829-1905) in flip grabbed the seductive princess, whom he handled in an overly other method from Moreau. The subjects of the Orient and the dance fade as secondary equipment within the eyes of the painter.
Variant from 1904. Musee nationwide Jean-Jacques-Henner, Paris. Isabelle de Lannoy
Jean-Jacques Henner, Salome, circa 1892. Oil on canvas, personal assortment. Jean-Yves Lacote
Henner specializes in what is very important, in line with him: early life and bodily attractiveness rising from the mysterious fog. It depicts a teenage woman with afflicted eyes, lengthy hair and naked shoulders, conserving a big copper tray, a discreet oriental component, on which she is going to obtain the top of the decapitated saint. The faded and glossy flesh of the younger woman is emphasised by means of the distinction along with her undeniable tunic, blue (prototype c. 1892) or crimson (1904 variant), and the very darkish background. The wonderful thing about the flesh turns out to come back from a dream with obscure however extraordinarily charming contours.
“Oriental” dance by means of Mata Hari, 1910. Wikimedia Commons Hip actions and pop culture
In the second one 1/2 of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the apogee of the “Salome” fable used to be however restricted to the cultural, highbrow and bourgeois elite, the “fin de siecle”. In contrast to Cleopatra, any other fantastical determine inherited from antiquity, she seemed handiest in short and inconspicuously in mass tradition within the twentieth century. Salome regularly falls into oblivion.
The unique leaf-losing fable is divorced from its biblical prototype. The lascivious dancer will triumph in public underneath different names, similar to Mata Hari, the alleged Javanese princess follower of the Hindu god Shiva who fascinated Paris and Western Europe at the eve of the First International Conflict. The cruelty of the femme fatale is erased handiest in prefer of her bodily and erotic appeals.
Shakira and Beyoncé within the track video for Stunning Liar, 2006. Screenshot YouTube/Andrew, CC BI
In 2006, proceeding those sensual waves from Pharaonic Egypt, Shakira and Beyoncé completed international good fortune with their track video entitled Stunning Liar, which provides a shocking mixture of RnB and Arabic dance. The rhythmic swing of the hips is now accompanied by means of feminist lyrics: it’s now not in regards to the beheading of a prophet, however a few narcissistic pervert whom the 2 performers collectively come to a decision to banish from their lifestyles. Well being determination!
