This enigmatic painting barely registers the gruesome spectacle of St. John the Baptist, whose head Salomé calmly balances on a platter. Redon’s interpretation seems to follow that of Oscar Wilde, whose scandalous version of the biblical story amplified Salomé’s motives as the result of her thwarted erotic desire for the prophet. The opulent purple scarf refers to the "Dance of the Seven Veils," another literary embellishment that was further cemented in Richard Strauss’s 1910 opera, and the seductive means by which she compelled her father-in-law-to-be to behead the evangelist.