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Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Page Created: 30 August 2026 / Page Updated: November 6, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000

The Apparition: Introduction

Gustave Moreau’s The Apparition confronts Salomé with the severed head of John the Baptist, floating at her eye level inside a dark, elaborately patterned hall. Blood falls from the neck, yet the head is ringed with light. Salomé points towards it while the court recedes around their encounter. The 1876 watercolour does not merely illustrate the biblical reward delivered on a platter: it invents a vision whose time, reality and ownership remain uncertain. Is Salomé seeing an external marvel, anticipating the killing, or remembering what has already happened?

At a Glance

  • ArtistGustave Moreau
  • TitleL’Apparition (The Apparition), RF 2130, Recto
  • Date1876; exhibited at the Paris Salon that year
  • MediumWatercolour
  • Dimensions106 × 72.2 cm
  • Collection and custodyMusée d’Orsay is responsible for the work; it is kept in the Louvre’s Department of Graphic Arts

Gustave Moreau in context

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Identifying RF 2130
  3. A Pointing Hand and a Suspended Head
  4. Matthew’s Banquet and Moreau’s New Event
  5. Agency Is Distributed, Not Solved
  6. Watercolour Made Monumental
  7. The Salon, a Sale and Charles Hayem
  8. Huysmans and the Image’s Literary Afterlife
  9. A Version Map: Five Objects, Not One
  10. Why Orsay and the Louvre Both Name the Work

Identifying RF 2130

The object discussed on this page is the tall watercolour registered as RF 2130, Recto. The Musée d’Orsay gives its date as 1876 and its dimensions as 106 by 72.2 centimetres. Moreau signed it in gold at the lower left. The museum’s present record names the Musée d’Orsay as the responsible institution and the Louvre’s Department of Graphic Arts as the place where it is kept.[1]

The Louvre catalogue independently records the same title, inventory number, year, medium and measurements. It also identifies Marie Gay as the model for Salomé.[2] These identifiers matter because Moreau developed several images around Salomé and John the Baptist. RF 2130 is neither an oil painting nor a generic composite assembled from those alternatives. Its facts must remain attached to this particular watercolour.

An exact public-domain reproduction corresponds to the Orsay object and inventory history.[3] It permits detailed visual study, although a screen cannot convey the physical presence of a sheet more than a metre high. The following account labels what is visibly present before proposing what those forms might mean.

A Pointing Hand and a Suspended Head

On visual inspection of RF 2130, Salomé occupies the lower-left foreground. Her body rises in profile, loaded with jewellery, linear ornaments and light fabric. One arm bends back towards her torso. The other reaches firmly across the composition, ending in a pointing hand. That horizontal gesture establishes the first route through the image: from the living dancer on the left towards the disembodied face above and to the right.

John’s head hangs without a visible support. A broad disc and radiating lines surround it, turning the severed face into the brightest concentration in the hall. Thin red trails descend from the neck. The conjunction is deliberately disturbing: bodily evidence of execution appears within a form associated with sacred radiance. The head is dead, but its open, frontal presence seems more commanding than the bodies around it. “Levitating” describes its appearance, not a claim that the image documents a physical event.

Salomé and the head face one another across a small interval, as though gesture and gaze complete a circuit. Her pointing finger may register shock, accusation, command or recognition. None of those emotions can be read as a documented mental state. What can be observed is the precision with which Moreau aligns an active hand with an unbodied face. The encounter becomes the composition’s axis even though it is displaced from the geometrical centre.

The court remains visible behind this pair. Herod sits in the left background, and Herodias is placed near him. Their shadowed presence makes royal authority part of the scene without allowing either figure to dominate it. At the right, the executioner appears with his sword. He connects the spectral display to material violence: whatever status the apparition has, someone has carried out the killing.

The interior rises above all five figures. Supports, arches, wall patterns and small ornamental details layer the setting rather than define one archaeologically consistent palace. Moreau’s structure resembles a throne room, sanctuary and theatre at once. It would be misleading to collapse its varied decorative vocabulary into a vague geographical label. Here the essential visual fact is how the patterns continue behind Salomé and John, making their stark face-to-face exchange flare inside a densely worked enclosure.

Scale changes the encounter further. At 106 centimetres high, this is not a small private sketch. Its portrait format gives Salomé almost bodily height while leaving a large architectural zone above her. The head therefore seems to occupy real space in front of a viewer, even as its unsupported suspension denies ordinary space. Monumental size and impossible placement pull in opposite directions.

Matthew’s Banquet and Moreau’s New Event

The source story appears in Matthew 14. Herod has imprisoned John because the prophet condemned his marriage to Herodias. At the ruler’s birthday feast, Herodias’s daughter dances and pleases him. Herod swears to grant her request; prompted by her mother, she asks for John’s head on a platter. The distressed king nevertheless gives the order, the executioner beheads John in prison, and the head is brought to the girl, who carries it to her mother. The Musée Gustave Moreau connects The Apparition directly to this chapter.[4]

Matthew does not name the daughter, although later tradition identifies her as Salomé. More importantly, the Gospel does not describe a shining head hovering before her. It provides imprisonment, dance, oath, request, execution and delivery. Moreau’s decisive addition is to convert the consequence into a confrontation. The platter no longer determines the image’s central relationship. Instead, the head occupies the air and seems to address the dancer through its unwavering presence.

That invention also changes narrative sequence. Blood indicates that beheading belongs to the imagined event, but the work supplies no clock. If the head appears after the killing, Salomé may be confronted by its result. If it is an anticipatory vision, the image projects the outcome before the order has been completed. If it is memory, the hall may be less a literal room than a space in which a past deed returns. Moreau lets all three routes remain available.

The guide to Moreau’s symbolism, mythology and religion is useful here because a symbol need not function as a one-word code. Halo, blood, sword and pointing hand set sacred authority, physical death and human action into relation. Their arrangement produces meaning without proving one psychological explanation.

Agency Is Distributed, Not Solved

Later culture often made Salomé the sole engine of John’s death. Matthew’s account is more structurally divided. Herod imprisons John, makes the public oath and orders the execution. Herodias supplies the desired request. Her daughter dances, asks and receives. An executioner performs the act. Moreau retains several participants in the background while isolating Salomé before the head.

That emphasis can encourage a reading of the dancer as powerful: her extended arm answers the vision, and her ornamented figure is the nearest complete body. Yet the same design can make her look exposed. Herod remains enthroned, Herodias is present, the armed agent stands nearby, and John’s face commands the brightest field. Salomé is central to looking without necessarily controlling what she sees.

The distinction guards against a familiar shortcut. Calling Salomé a timeless destructive woman simply repeats a later stereotype and hides the court’s network of decisions. A more productive gender-aware reading asks how spectacle redirects blame. The dancer is displayed for Herod and for the picture’s viewer; after the dance, she becomes the most visible person associated with violence authorised elsewhere. Moreau does not remove her agency, but he makes agency, command and consequence visually separable.

Three broad interpretations can therefore coexist. In a supernatural reading, John manifests as a sacred apparition before those implicated in his death. In a psychological reading, the head externalises anticipation, memory or remorse. In a theatrical reading, the luminous disc and frontal face organise a climactic tableau rather than a literal occurrence. Each explains part of the design. None is certified as the sole account by the object records or by the painted surface.

Watercolour Made Monumental

The current Orsay and Louvre catalogues classify RF 2130 as watercolour.[1][2] That official wording should govern the medium line. In reproduction, brilliant whites, dense colour and small opaque-looking accents can seem gouache-like, while fine contours and translucent passages preserve the mobility associated with watercolour. “Gouache-like” is a description of visible effect, not permission to add gouache, graphite or another material to the museum’s classification.

This distinction matters because the work can easily be discussed as if it were one of Moreau’s oils. Its depth does not depend on canvas impasto. Dark washes, drawn edges, reserved or heightened lights and concentrated details create changes of substance across the sheet. The halo appears to radiate because pale marks press against the surrounding darkness. Jewellery flickers because small accents interrupt larger areas of colour. Blood reads instantly because its narrow red lines remain isolated.

The unusually large format gives those water-based effects public force. Moreau could use works on paper for study, transfer and experiment, but RF 2130 demonstrates that watercolour could also carry a finished Salon statement. The gold signature reinforces that status. Readers can place it within the wider range of the artist’s drawings and watercolours, where preparatory function and autonomous display are kept distinct.

The Salon, a Sale and Charles Hayem

Moreau showed the watercolour at the Paris Salon of 1876. His contribution that year also included Salomé Dancing, Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra and Saint Sebastian, according to the Musée Gustave Moreau’s chronology.[5] The grouping allowed visitors to encounter related biblical imagery across different objects and media; it did not make the dancing oil and the apparition watercolour interchangeable.

The ownership record begins moving almost immediately. Moreau retained RF 2130 until 1876, then sold it to the dealer Léon Gauchez on 31 May for 8,000 francs. Gauchez owned it until 1878. Charles Hayem held it from 1878 and offered it to the French state in 1879. The Orsay record notes formal acceptance of the gift that year and material entry into the Luxembourg museum on 14 May 1898.[1][2]

The sheet subsequently passed through the Musée du Luxembourg and the Musée national d’art moderne before its transfer to the Louvre in 1929. Those movements explain why both donor and state appear early in its history while present catalogue responsibility belongs to Orsay. They also show that the watercolour’s public importance was recognised within a few years of its Salon appearance.

Huysmans and the Image’s Literary Afterlife

Joris-Karl Huysmans gave Moreau’s Salomé images an influential literary reception in his 1884 novel À rebours. The Musée Gustave Moreau notes the novel’s extensive attention to the dancer and The Apparition.[6] Huysmans’s highly charged description helped later readers approach the image through luxury, danger and heightened sensation.

The date sets a useful boundary. His novel appeared eight years after the Salon, so it records reception rather than Moreau’s instructions for decoding the watercolour. It can illuminate how compelling the image became for late nineteenth-century literature, but it cannot settle whether the head is a miracle, a recollection or a projection. The work’s uncertainty existed before the novelist elaborated it.

A Version Map: Five Objects, Not One

Moreau’s return to this narrative rewards comparison only when the objects stay separate.

RF 2130, the active work here, is the 1876 watercolour measuring 106 by 72.2 centimetres. Orsay carries institutional responsibility, and the Louvre’s graphic-arts department keeps it. These are the only identity and custody details that belong in its main record.[1][2]

Musée Gustave Moreau Cat. 222 is an undated oil on canvas measuring 142 by 103 centimetres. The house-museum explicitly says that its painting takes up the iconography of the celebrated watercolour, then describes the haloed, bleeding head, Salomé, the royal pair and executioner.[4] Shared imagery does not make it RF 2130.

The Fogg Museum work is another oil version of The Apparition. It is a distinct, smaller object in the Harvard Art Museums, not an alternative location or medium entry for the Orsay watercolour. Its role in this map is to mark another treatment of the hovering-head composition; its object data should never migrate to RF 2130.

The dancing Salomés choose an earlier narrative phase. The Hammer Museum’s Salomé Dancing Before Herod is the tall 1876 oil in which the dancer performs before the enthroned ruler and John’s head is absent. The Hammer’s focused exhibition also assembled numerous related studies and variants, including the separate canvas usually called the Tattooed Salomé.[7] Those works belong to the dance, not to the active watercolour’s inventory record.

The Metropolitan Museum oil is Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, dated about 1876. It is oil on wood and only 21.6 by 12.1 centimetres. In that small composition Salomé turns away from the luminous, bloodied head, revising the direction of attention that governs RF 2130.[8] Its support, size, pose and New York collection are all comparator facts, not missing data for The Apparition.

This map clarifies Moreau’s method. Repetition did not mean copying a single finished solution. He moved between the dance, request, apparition and aftermath; changed watercolour to oil and large scale to small; and redirected Salomé’s gesture or gaze. The broader guide to Moreau’s paintings traces similar revision across other subjects.

Why Orsay and the Louvre Both Name the Work

The two museum names describe complementary roles. Musée d’Orsay lists RF 2130 within its collection and carries responsibility for it. The physical work is kept by the Louvre’s Department of Graphic Arts, whose catalogue locates it in the framed-works reserve and says it may be viewed by appointment in the department’s consultation room.[1][2] That arrangement is not evidence for two watercolours.

Orsay’s current online notice says the work is not exhibited. Because works on paper are sensitive to light and museum arrangements change, a visitor should consult the live records and contact the graphic-arts study room before travelling. Ownership, curatorial responsibility, storage and public display are related facts, but they are not synonyms.

Researched works directory

This searchable evidence census was assembled from public museum records and a reproducible Wikidata snapshot. It is not a catalogue raisonné, a claim to complete oeuvre coverage, or a substitute for Pierre-Louis Mathieu's printed catalogue, which was not consulted for this directory.

325 artworks

NameDateMedium
Abstract Study1850Painting
Abstract Study1875Painting
Abstract Study1890Painting
Academic Study of a Man1847Painting
Achilles the Centaur Chiron1859Painting
Andromeda1867Painting
AndromedaDate unknownPainting
Angels Following the Magi1860Painting
Angels following the Three Magi1898Painting
Angels Throwing Flowers on the Vatican1850Painting
Aphrodite, 1871Date unknownPainting
Apollo and Daphne1852Painting
Apollo and The Nine Muses1856Painting
Apollo and the Satyrs1850Painting
Apollo Victorious over Python1885Painting
Apollon and Marsyas1858Painting
Ariadne and Theseus1875Painting
Arion1891Painting
Athenians being Delivered to the Minotaur in the Cretan Labyrinth1855Painting
Autumn1885Painting
Bacchanal1850Painting
Bacchus on the Panther -cart.Date unknownPainting
Bathsheba1875Painting
Beheading of John the Baptist1872Painting
Bertrand and Raton1879Painting
Binding of Isaac1850Painting
Birth of Venus1870Painting
Briseis Departure1859Painting
centaurDate unknownPainting
Centaurs1850Painting
Chimera1850Painting
Chimeras1875Painting
Christ and the Two Thieves1870Painting
Christ at Gethsemane1850Painting
Christ at Gethsemane1875Painting
Christ at Lake Tiberias1850Painting
Christ at the Column1850Painting
Christ Blessing Hist Mother1850Painting
Christ Reliever1850Painting
Circe1850Painting
Cleopatra1850Painting
Cleopatra1887Painting
Danaé1858Painting
Darius, Fleeing after the battle of Arbela, Stops, Exhausted, to Drink from a Pond1853Painting
Darius Flight1850Painting
Dead Orpheus1850Painting
Dead Orpheus1890Painting
Dead Poet Carried by a Centaur1890Painting
Death Giving Laurels to the Winner of the Tournament1859Painting
Death of a Young Crusader1870Painting
Death of Moses1850Painting
Death of Sapho1850Painting
Death of Sapho1872Painting
Debauchery1850Painting
Dejanira (Autumn)1872Painting
Delilah1850Painting
Delilah1890Painting
Delilah1896Painting
Descent from the Cross1850Painting
Diana bathing1900Painting
Diomede devoured by his horses1865Painting
Diomedes Devoured by His Horses1865Painting
Diomedes Devoured by His Own Horses1870Painting
Œdipus the Wayfarer1888Painting
Draft for Sapho1850Painting
Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino1858Painting
Endymion1850Painting
Erigone1865Painting
Eve1850Painting
Eve1875Painting
Fairy in a Cave1850Painting
Fairy with Griffins1870Painting
Fairy with Griffins1876Painting
Fée aux griffons1876Drawing
Femme et licorne1890Painting
Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino1858Painting
Françoise de Rimini1850Painting
Galateac. 1880Painting
Galathea1896Painting
GalatheaDate unknownPainting
Ganymede1886Painting
Gardian Angel of the City1850Painting
Genius of Evil1850Painting
Genius of Evil1875Painting
Golgotha1870Painting
Hamlet1850Painting
Hamlet Giving Poison to the King1850Painting
Helen1850Painting
Helen1880Painting
Helen at the Scaean Gate1888Painting
Helen Glorified1893Painting
Helen on the Walls of Troy1850Painting
Helen on the Walls of Troy1875Painting
HeleneDate unknownPainting
Hercule et les oiseaux du lac de StymphaleDate unknownPainting
Hercules and Omphale1856Painting
Hercules and the Ceryneian Hind1871Painting
Hercules and the Daughters of Thespius1850Painting
Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra1875–1876Painting
Hercules and the Nemean Lion1850Painting
Hercules and the Stymphalian Birds1872Painting
Hercules and Thespius Daughters1850Painting
Hercules at Lake Stymphalia1875Painting
Hercules between Vice and Virtue1850Painting
Hesiod and the Muse1870Painting
Hesiod and the Muse1875Painting
Hesiod and the Muse1891Painting
Hesiod and the Muses1860Painting
Hesiod and the Muses1882Painting
Hésiode enfant1860Painting
Horse Rider1854Painting
Horse Rider1870Painting
Horse Rider and Amazon1869Painting
Horse Riders and Horses1854Painting
Indian Women Poets1890Painting
Interior, Draft1850Painting
Jacob and the Angel1876Painting
Jacob and the Angel1878Painting
Jacob et l'Ange1878Painting
Jason1865Painting
Jason et Éros1891Painting
Judith1850Painting
Jupiter and Semele1889–1895Painting
King Canute and His Courtesans1850Painting
King David1878Painting
L'enlèvement d'Europe1872Painting
La FéeDate unknownPainting
La mort de Sapho1872Painting
La mort de Sapho1876Painting
La Villa BorghèseDate unknownPainting
Landscape1850Painting
Landscape, Draft1850Painting
Landscape (Neighborhood of Étampes)1850Painting
Le Bon Samaritain1865Painting
Le Cantique des cantiques1853Painting
Le Christ et Madeleine (Noli me Tangere)1889Painting
Le Grand Pan contemple les Sphères Célestes1897Drawing
Le Poète et la Sirène1893Painting
Le Soir1887Painting
Le Sphinx1886Painting
Leda1846Painting
Leda1850Painting
Leda1870Painting
Les Chimères1884Painting
Les Plaintes du poète1882Painting
Life of Humanity1875Painting
Life of Humanity1886Painting
Life of Humanity: Salvator Mundi1886Painting
Life of Humanity: The Golden Age, Adam - Evening - Sleep1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Golden Age, Adam - Morning - Prayer1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Golden Age, Adam - Noon - Extasy1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Iron Age, Cain - Evening - Death1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Iron Age, Cain - Morning - Work1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Iron Age, Cain - Noon - Rest1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Silver Age, Hesiod and Orpheus, Hesiod - Evening - Tears1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Silver Age, Hesiod and Orpheus, Hesiod - Morning - Inspiration1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Silver Age, Hesiod and Orpheus, Orpheus - Noon - Song1879Painting
Love Victorious over Death1850Painting
Lucretia and Tarquin1850Painting
Magdalene on Golgotha1850Painting
Magdalene on Golgotha1875Painting
Magdalene on Golgotha1880Painting
Magnolia1864Painting
Martyrdrom1850Painting
Messalina1850Painting
Messalina1874Painting
Messaline1874Painting
Mort de Sapho1900Painting
Moses Exposed1875Painting
Moses Exposed on the Nile1875Painting
Moses, in Sight of the Promised Land, Takes His Sandals Off1854Painting
Moses Rescued from the Nile1893Painting
Mystic Flower1890Painting
Narcissus1850Painting
Narcissus1885Painting
Narcissus1890Painting
Noces d’Alexandre et de RoxaneDate unknownDrawing
Nude Study1850Painting
Nyx, Night Goddess1880Painting
Oedipus and the Sphinx1864Painting
Orestes1850Painting
Orestes1875Painting
Orestes and the Erinyes1875Painting
Orphés1865Painting
Orpheus1865Painting
Orpheus Head1850Painting
Orpheus on Eurydice's Tomb1890Painting
Pasiphaë1850Painting
Pasiphaë1880Painting
Pasiphaë, Grisaille1850Painting
Pauline Moreau as the Virgin1848Painting
Perseus and Andromeda1870Painting
Persian Poet1875Painting
Petrarch After the Triumph1850Painting
Phaéton1878Painting
Phoebus and Boreas1879Painting
Pietà1867Painting
Pietà1875Painting
Pietà1876Painting
PietàDate unknownPainting
Pittacus the Tyrant in War Costume1883Drawing
Polyphemus1880Painting
Poney1870Painting
Portrait of Gustave Moreau by Himself1850Painting
Portrait of Gustave Moreau by Himself1890Painting
Postman and Horses1854Painting
Prometheus1868Painting
Prometheus1869Painting
Prometheus Thunderstruck1870Painting
Prometheus, Variant1870Painting
Rape of Deianira1850Painting
Rape of Deianira1872Painting
Return of the Argonauts1890Painting
Ruines de Rome : le Colisée vu des jardins de l'Angélicum des dominicains1858Painting
Saint Cecilia and the Angels of Music1850Painting
Saint Francis Kissing a Leper1850Painting
Saint George and the Dragon1889–1890Painting
Saint Jerome1850Painting
Saint Sebastian1850Painting
Saint Sebastian1870Painting
Saint Sebastian and the Angel1876Painting
Saint Sebastian and the Angels1850Painting
Saint Sebastian Succoured1885Painting
Saint Sebastian with Archers1875Painting
Saint-Sébastien et l'ange1876Painting
Saint Sébastien soigné par les saintes femmes1869Painting
Sainte Cecilia1850Painting
Salome1850Painting
Salome1872Painting
Salome1874Painting
Salome at the Prison1873Painting
Salomé au Jardin1878Painting
Salome Dancing1872Painting
Salomé Dancing Before Herod1876Painting
Salome Dancing in front of Herod1876Painting
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist1876Painting
Santa Cecilia (Moreau)Date unknownPainting
Sappho falling into the Abyss1867Painting
Semele1889Painting
Semele, Draft1889Painting
Singing Centaurs1850Painting
Slaves Thrown to the Morays1850Painting
Song of Songs （Cantique des Cantiques）1893Painting
Spanish Conversation1850Painting
Spring1850Painting
St. SebastianDate unknownPainting
Study1850Painting
Study1874Painting
Study1875Painting
Study for Jupiter and Semele1889Painting
Study for Moses Taking Off His Sandals1854Painting
Study for Saint Cecilia1850Painting
Study for Salome1874Painting
Study for The Triumph of Alexander the Great1885Painting
Study from Nature1850Painting
Study of a red ibis1900Painting
Sultan1850Painting
Suzanne et les vieillards1895Painting
swinging girlDate unknownPainting
Tea Rose1850Painting
Temptation1890Painting
Tempting Demon1875Painting
The Angels of Sodome1872Painting
The Apparition1876Drawing
The Argonauts1885Painting
The Bad Rich1850Painting
The calvary1867Painting
The childhood of Sixtus V.1853Painting
The Chimera1867Painting
The chimeraDate unknownPainting
The Chimeras1850Painting
The Crowning with Thorns1846Painting
The Daughters of Thespius1853Painting
The Dead Lyres1897Painting
The Decameron1850Painting
The Disciples in Emmaus1850Painting
The Dream Haunting the Mogul1881Painting
The Entombment1867Painting
The Good Samaritan1850Painting
The Infant Moses1877Painting
The Magi1860Painting
The Martyred Saint Sebastian1869Painting
The Mermaid and the Poet1895Painting
The Muses Leaving Their Father Apollo to Go and Light the World1868Painting
The Parca and the Angel of Death1890Painting
The Parcae1850Painting
The Pieridae1875Painting
The Pieridae1880Painting
The Pietà1867Painting
The Plague in Florence1870Painting
The Poet and the Siren1894Painting
The Prodigal Son1850Painting
The Prodigal Son1890Painting
The Rape of Europe1868Painting
The Rape of Europe1869Painting
The Shulamite1853Painting
The Sirens1850Painting
The Sirens1875Painting
The Sirens1882Painting
The Springs1856Painting
The Suitors1862Painting
The Toilette1887Painting
The Travelling Angels1875Painting
The Travelling Poet1890Painting
The Unicorn1885Painting
The Unicorns1888Painting
The Voices1867Painting
The Wandering Jew1870Painting
The Young Man and Death1856–1865Painting
Tomyris and Cyrus1850Painting
Triumph of Alexander the Great1873Painting
Triumphing Church1870Painting
Tyrtaeus1850Painting
Tyrtaeus Singing While Fighting1860Painting
Un Saint au désert1879Painting
Untitled1866Painting
Venice1850Painting
Venice1885Painting
Venus Rising from the Sea1866Painting
Victim1850Painting
Vue de Florence1858Painting
Walk in a Park1865Painting
Water Fairy1850Painting
Womand and Chimera1875Painting
Young Thracian Woman Holding Orpheus' Head1866Painting

Frequently Asked Questions

What appears before Salomé in The Apparition?

The severed head of John the Baptist floats unsupported at Salomé’s eye level, surrounded by a radiant disc and marked by descending blood. Scripture describes the head being delivered on a platter; the hovering, haloed confrontation is Moreau’s invention.[3][4]

What medium did Moreau use for RF 2130?

The Musée d’Orsay and Louvre classify it as watercolour.[1][2] Some dense, bright details may look gouache-like in reproduction, but visual appearance should not be turned into an unsupported addition to the official medium record.

When was The Apparition made, and did it appear at the Salon?

Moreau made and exhibited the watercolour in 1876. It formed part of his return to the Paris Salon alongside two major oils, Salomé Dancing and Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra, as well as Saint Sebastian.[5]

How does it differ from Salomé Dancing Before Herod?

The Hammer painting is a 1876 oil on canvas showing the dance before Herod, with no severed head visible. RF 2130 is a separate watercolour in which the bloodied head appears before Salomé. Their media, actions, dimensions, inventory numbers and custodial histories must not be combined.[1][7]

Where is The Apparition now?

It belongs to the Musée d’Orsay collection under inventory RF 2130 but is physically kept in the Louvre’s Department of Graphic Arts. The current records do not list it on general display; the Louvre indicates consultation by appointment, subject to its procedures.[1][2]

Discussion

Use this evidence-led guide as a starting point for close looking rather than a final verdict.

Share an observation about The Apparition or a source that adds useful context.

Reader Insights

Close Looking

Which detail most changes your reading of The Apparition?

Context

How do scale, support, medium or present museum evidence shape the encounter?

Open Question

What remains uncertain when visual inference is separated from documented fact?

Join the Conversation

Add your reading below, keeping observations specific and evidence clear.

References

  1. Musée d’Orsay, “L’Apparition.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
  2. Louvre Collections, “L’Apparition.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
  3. Musée d’Orsay via Wikimedia Commons, “The Apparition, Gustave Moreau 1876.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
  4. Musée Gustave Moreau, “The Apparition.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
  5. Musée Gustave Moreau, “Biography of Gustave Moreau.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
  6. Musée Gustave Moreau, “Artworks on the Move.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
  7. Hammer Museum, “A Strange Magic: Gustave Moreau’s Salome.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
  8. Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Salome with the Head of John the Baptist.”, accessed 30 August 2026.