Question: In Donatello's "Feast of Herod," how are the foreground figures represented?
About the article "Donatello", section "Work in Florence".

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The Feast of Herod is a bronze relief sculpture created by Donatello circa 1427.
It appears on the baptistry of the Siena Cathedral in Italy.
It is one of Donatello's earliest relief sculptures.
The sculpture is noted for Donatello's use of perspective.
The piece is 60 by 60 centimeters.
The sculpture depicts the Beheading of St. John the Baptist after Salome asks Herod Antipas for his head on a platter.
The scene depicts an executioner presenting the severed head, and Herod reacting in shock. 
  Herod the Great  Herod Antipas, called "Herod the Tetrarch" or "Herod" in the Gospels and in Acts 4:27  Pontius Pilate  Agrippa I, called "King Herod" or "Herod" in Acts 12  Felix governor of Judea who was present at the trial of Paul, and his wife Drusilla in Acts 24:24  
Donatello's sculpture is notable for its detailed realism, evidence of the artist's skills.
Even the veins of St. Mark's left hand are visible as he holds a text upon his hip.
The contrapposto pose, or "natural pose", is used with Donatello's "St.
Mark."
The saint has more weight on his left leg, his left knee is bent, and his torso is slightly twisted.
The style is much more naturalistic than the symmetry and unrealistic nature of art from the Dark Ages.
Also Donatello's sculpture differs from medieval works in the way that drapery is used, specifically in that St. Mark's figure is revealed by a realistic draping of linen. 
He has works in the National Galleries of Scotland collection, including a portrait of composer James MacMillan and versions of Peter Paul Rubens's The Feast of Herod and Titian's Venus Anadyomene.
His works are also in the collections of the British Council and Tate Galleries. 
The painting includes many portraits of leading political and military figures from around Europe, relying on prints for the likenesses of those not known to Strobel.
It is probably central to the allegory that the coat of arms of Strobel's home city, now Wrocław, Poland, which he would have known by its German name of Breslau, includes the image of the head of John the Baptist on a platter.
Strobel was forced to leave Breslau by the Thirty Years' War in 1634, finally settling in Poland.
Only Herod himself, dressed in oriental costume, reacts strongly to the head produced at the dining table; the other figures seem unconcerned, which may be the point of the allegory.
Identifications of the figures shown vary.
One set, predicated on a date in the early 1640s for the work, is as follows: the figure holding a trumpet at the centre, looking out at the viewer, is the Dutch Admiral Tromp, whose victory at the Battle of the Downs in 1639 had decisively ended Spanish naval power.
To his left Henry IV of France (who had died in 1610) pulls at a cloth over a table laid with fruit (so presenting "the fruits of victory").
The group of men standing in the foreground on the left are the Imperial generalissimo Wallenstein, with the long staff, with behind him his subordinate generals Count Vilém Kinský, Christian Freiherr von Ilow and Count Adam Erdmann Trcka von Lipa as well as one of their assassins in 1634, the Irish colonel of dragoons Walter Butler of Roscrea.
Among the diners at the table are John George I, Elector of Saxony, Charles I of England, the Infanta and from 1637 Empress Maria Anna of Spain (wife of Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor), Marie de' Medici, Dowager Queen of France, her favourite Concino Concini (d. 1617), George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (favourite of Charles I until assassinated in 1637), and Marie de Rohan, duchesse de Chevreuse.
The head of John the Baptist on the platter has the features of Duke John Christian of Brieg (d. 1639), the staunch Calvinist champion of Silesian Protestantism.
Salome holds the plate, and since her elaborate dress still leaves her implausibly high breasts completely uncovered, she is unlikely to be a portrait of an important figure.
To the right of Herod, the group of ladies includes: Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, Queen Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, widow of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (died 1632), with her daughter Christina, Queen of Sweden (only born in 1626) and sister Catherine of Brandenburg, briefly ruler of Transylvania after her husband Gabriel Bethlen, King of Hungary, died in 1629.
The boy with the torch in the foreground may be the exiled Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine (born 1617, son of Elizabeth Stuart), who inherited in 1632, and the somewhat lion-like dog in a sitting-up posture may be an illusion to the lions in the arms of the Electoral Palatinate as well as those of the Dutch Republic.
The lady in the large turban in the row behind may be Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, wife of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, the Dutch stadtholder, who gave the Palatine family refuge in exile.
Alternative identifications find a portrait of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, and identify the features of John the Baptist as those of Charles I of England, although he was not beheaded until 1649, which is probably well after Strobel painted the work.