'We feel the elation of Salome as she kisses the lips of the dead prophet whose mouth she has likened to 'ripe fruit' and 'a pomegranate cut in twain with a knife of ivory,' as if his lips truly were meant to be feasted on. Beardsley brilliantly captures and shares the ardor of the moment just after Salome had acquiesced to her necrophilic appetite and in his illustration we see her literally floating in the air, lifted to a state of suspended rapture above a puddle of blood...
In the upper left-hand corner of the picture we are reminded of the 'clusters of black grapes' to which Salome previously compared Iokanaan's hair in the text, again speaking of his body as something to be devoured, ravaged, thus reversing the traditional roles of woman and man in regards to sexuality'
text via www.victorianweb.org
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