Spinello Aretino, Two Haloed Mourners

This is a fragment of a painting in fresco, a technique that involved painting directly onto fresh plaster. It has been repainted and only a layer of tin remains on the haloes, which may originally have been gilded.

It once formed part of an image showing the burial of Saint John the Baptist and decorated the wall of the Manetti chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. The entire chapel was decorated with frescoes that told the life of the saint in six large scenes.

Saint John was beheaded on the orders of King Herod, who had offered his stepdaughter Salome whatever she desired. Influenced by Herodias, her mother, she asked for John’s head; Herodias disliked the saint because he criticised her marriage to Herod, her former husband’s brother. The saint’s disciples retrieved his body for burial. Here, two of them bow their heads in grief, gazing sorrowfully upon his body.

The series of frescoes were destroyed but 11 fragments – cut from the wall by the English artist Thomas Patch – survive in other European collections. Patch also made engravings after the frescoes in 1772; these are the only surviving record of their appearance. One other mourner from the same scene is now in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa.