The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist

Master of Palanquinos · c. 1490–c. 1500

Medium

Tempera and oil on panel

Original size

109 × 73.7 cm (42 7/8 × 29 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

A rare and arresting work from late fifteenth-century Castile, this panel painting renders one of scripture's most dramatic moments with a stillness that makes it all the more unsettling. The Master of Palanquinos takes his name from a retablo in the church of San Juan in Palanquinos, León, and his work sits at the crossroads of Spanish Gothic tradition and the Flemish influence that was reshaping Iberian painting during this period. Working in tempera and oil on panel, he achieved rich, jewel-like colour and precise linear detail — qualities visible in the sharp rendering of fabric, the geometry of the executioner's posture, and the solemn dignity afforded to the saint even in his final moment. The figures have the flattened gravity of icon painting but the psychological weight of something more searching. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this panel as part of its collection of Spanish medieval and early Renaissance works, where it represents an understudied but significant thread in the story of European painting. The hand-painted oil reproduction replicates the tonal depth and surface texture of the original panel, giving the same sense of compressed drama and devotional intensity that has kept this work compelling for more than five centuries.