Value

attributed to Nicolas Poussin
Midas before Bacchus
1628-30
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Camille Pissarro
The Small Bridge, Pontoise
1875
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Lyubov Popova
Painterly Architectonic
1918
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Emil Preetorius
Die 6
1914
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

John Piper
Coventry Cathedral, November 15, 1940
1940
oil on panel
Manchester Art Gallery

Aimé Ponson
Still Life with Books
1874
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Béziers

Emil Pirchan the Elder
The Artist's Mother
ca. 1895
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Serge Poliakoff
Orange Composition with Blue Circle
1954
oil on canvas
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Sigmar Polke
Double Portrait of Fabiola
1964
oil on canvas
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Pordenone (Giovanni Antonio Licinio)
Study of a Young Man
1520-21
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Giulio Cesare Procaccini
Figure Studies
ca. 1600
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Earl Purdy
The Uppercut
ca. 1930-40
etching
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Giacomo Quarenghi
Colonnade, St  Peter's Basilica, Rome
ca. 1785
watercolor on paper
Morgan Library, New York

Domenico Quaglio the Younger
Villa Malta in Rome
1830
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Crispyn van den Queboorn
Portrait of a Young Man
1648
oil on panel
Kunstmuseum Basel

Erasmus Quellinus the Younger
The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

A picture by the Venetian seventeenth-century painter Francesco Maffei, representing a handsome young woman with a sword in her left hand, and in her right a charger on which rests the head of a beheaded man, has been published as a portrayal of Salome with the head of John the Baptist.  In fact the Bible states that the head of St. John the Baptist was brought to Salome on a charger.  But what about the sword?  Salome did not decapitate St. John the Baptist with her own hands.  Now the Bible tells us about another handsome woman in connection with the decapitation of a man, namely Judith.  In this case the situation is exactly reversed.  The sword in Maffei's picture would be correct because Judith beheaded Holofernes with her own hand, but the charger would not agree with the Judith theme because the text explicitly states that the head of Holofernes was put into a sack.  Thus we have two literary sources applicable to our picture with equal right and equal inconsistency.  If we should interpret it as a portrayal of Salome the text would account for the charger, but not for the sword; if we should interpret it as a portrayal of Judith, the text would account for the sword, but not for the charger.  We should be entirely at a loss were we to depend on the literary sources alone.  Fortunately we do not.  As we could supplement and correct our practical experience by inquiring into the manner in which, under varying historical conditions, objects and events were expressed by forms, viz., into the history of style, just so can we supplement and correct our knowledge of literary sources by inquiring into the manner in which, under varying historical conditions, specific themes or concepts were expressed by objects and events, viz., into the history of types.

In the case at hand we shall have to ask whether there were, before Francesco Maffei painted his picture, any unquestionable portrayals of Judith (unquestionable because they would include, for instance, Judith's maid) with unjustified chargers; or any unquestionable portrayals of Salome (unquestionable because they would include, for instance, Salome's parents) with unjustified swords.  And lo! while we cannot adduce a single Salome with a sword, we encounter, in Germany and North Italy, several sixteenth-century paintings depicting Judith with a charger; there was a "type" of "Judith with a Charger," but there was no "type" of "Salome with a Sword."  From this we can safely conclude that Maffei's picture too, represents Judith, and not, as had been assumed, Salome.

We may further ask why artists felt entitled to transfer the motif of the charger from Salome to Judith, but not the motif of the sword from Judith to Salome.  This question can be answered, again by inquiring into the history of types, with two reasons.  One reasons is that the sword was an established and honorific attribute of Judith, of many martyrs, and of such virtues as Justice, Fortitude, etc.; thus it could not be transferred with propriety to a lascivious girl.  The other reason is that during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the charger with the head of St. John the Baptist had become an isolated devotional image especially popular in the northern countries and in North Italy; it had been singled out from a representation of the Salome story in much the same way as the group of St. John the Evangelist resting on the bosom of the Lord had come to be singled out from the Last Supper, or the Virgin in childbed from the Nativity.  The existence of this devotional image established a fixed association of ideas between the head of a beheaded man and a charger, and thus the motif of a charger could more easily be substituted for the motif of the sack in an image of Judith, than the motif of a sword could have penetrated into an image of Salome. 

– Erwin Panofsky, from Studies in Iconology (1939)