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Judith Beheading Holofernes by Artemesia Gentlileschi hangs in the Uffizi, in Florence; it is one of a tiny number of paintings by women in the museum. It is based on the story of Judith from the Catholic Bible, a story that does not appear in either the Protestant Bible or in the Hebrew canon. The Douay-Rheims Bible tells the story; the part about Judith begins in Chapter 8.
The Assyrians under Nebuchadezar decided to attack the Israelites who only recently had moved to the land of Israel after leaving Egypt. The leaders of the Israelites were sure they would all die, so they decided to give God five days to save them before surrendering. Judith was a devout widow, whose husband had left her great wealth. When she heard about this decision, she berated the leaders, all male. She told them she would deal with it.
She dressed herself in beautiful garments, and God made her even more beautiful. She and a maid went out of the gates to the Assyrian camp. They talked their way into the presence of Holofernes, who was entranced, especially when Judith promised to help him defeat the Israelites without losing his soldiers. A couple of days later he called her to his tent, intending to seduce her. They ate and drank. Soon Holofernes lay on the bed, passed out from wine. Judith said a prayer.
8 And when she had said this, she went to the pillar that was at his bed’s head, and loosed his sword that hung tied upon it. 9 And when she had drawn it out, she took him by the hair of his head, and said: Strengthen me, O Lord God, at this hour. 10 And she struck twice upon his neck, and [c]ut off his head, and took off his canopy from the pillars, and rolled away his headless body.
They escaped from the camp of the Assyrians, went to the leaders of the Israelites and Judith told them what to do. The next morning, they hung the head of Holofernes on the city wall and went down to fight the Assyrians. The Assyrian soldiers raced to find Holofernes, but seeing him headless, they panicked, ran, and were slaughtered.
No wonder this book didn’t make the cut for the patriarchal bibles. This isn’t a submissive woman, accepting direction and even motherhood from men or God. Judith is a self-directed woman, secure in the knowledge that her God blesses her willingness to act. Gentileschi puts that on the canvas.
Judith jerks her sword through Holofernes’ neck and shoves his head with a left fist full of his hair. Her knee is on the mattress against his body to anchor him. The strength of her arms is emphasized by the taut bracelet and the rolled-up sleeves of that gorgeous dress, with its decorations and folds. The left sleeve falls off her shoulder, she is a real woman. Her equally powerful maid locks up Holofernes’ arms, rendering him defenseless, with his fist waving helplessly. Judith’s face is purposeful; this is a killing by a butcher, not some frail aristocrat afraid of knackery or skittish about blood. There is no pity, only muscle.
Some art historians say she was influenced by Caravaggio, who also painted this scene. Caravaggio’s Judith stands at arms length from the body of Holofernes. Her sword is almost invisible, and she seems to be slicing bread. Gentileschi’s Judith handles the sword like a hacksaw. In Caravaggio’s painting, Holofernes is as important as Judith. Not so in Gentileschi’s work: he is in shadow, while the light shines on the faces of the women.
Wikipedia gives one version of Gentileschi’s life. Her father, a painter himself, hired one Agostino Tassi as a teacher. Tassi raped Gentileschi, and a dreadful trial ensued, complete with allegations that Gentileschi slept around, which we know because we have the trial transcripts. To test the truth of her testimony, she was tortured, perhaps by thumbscrews. Tassi was sentenced to jail for a year. There is a lot of scholarship discussing the role of the rape and the trial in her paintings, which I leave for the interested reader.
There is also a movie about her, Artemisia, which is historically inaccurate, and as cruel as the thumbscrews to the gifted Gentileschi. In it, Tassi is treated as the source of her creativity, a common myth about strong women, one that persists even today. Hilary Rodham Clinton, anyone? You can look for some of Tassi’s work here. To my eye, he is a routine painter.
Gentileschi’s work compares well to Caravaggio’s. If you didn’t know Gentileschi was a woman, it would be hard to understand why she was ignored for so many centuries.
46 Comments
This story did not make the bible?
I can believe the guy passed out I can’t believe he waited a few days.
Never mind it made the Catholic bible. Are Catholics really more progressive than Protestants?
What a glorious color her dress is. The blood specks show up so well on it.
Sorry, but I learned this story from the bible, probably not St. James version though – in bible history study at Wellesley.
I never knew there were any other books in the bible until my 30s, when I picked up a Catholic bible.
link
Here’s a video that shows a lot of closeups
That is wonderful: of course it is the Caravaggio version of the painting.
The emotions on the womens’ faces are telegraphic — the maid’s intensity and frustration, Judith’s determined and measured fierceness. One wonders if these were emotions Gentileschi felt in her own heart but could not give rein in such brutal form.
This piece made me think of a particularly important lesson I took away from ethnopsychologist Clarissa Pinkola-Estes’ work, Women Who Run With the Wolves — a good mother knows when to bring death.
And boy, does Judith and in turn Gentileschi bring it.
It’s no wonder at all that this was omitted by multiple versions of the Bible. Religion in the modern world has served to restrain women in so many ways; why not omit the story of Judith as well to that end? We can’t very well have too many women who bring righteous death lest we find ourselves on the wrong end of that blade.
Which brings up another matter: Justice wasn’t always blind. She carried both a balance and a sword in Roman times; it was only a couple hundred years before this painting that Justice was blindfolded and her sword removed. Perhaps Gentileschi reminds us that Justice once knew and saw her target well.
nice elliott.
I’m a namesake of Judith – my mother knew well what she was doing. However, I was introduced to her via Klimt, his sensual Judith 1.
Haven’t seen the original in Vienna and have long wondered if Holfernes’ head in her hand is more conspicuous. Her expression seems to be Klimt’s focus.
Klimt’s Judith at artchive; at wikimedia; and
at wikipedia
Yea, when I clicked the title for this post I was expecting the Caravaggio, but this one is good too
oops right, you can tell I skipped art appreciation class
Lest anyone misunderstands, I do know Klimt was a decorative artist, not in the Gentileschi or Caravaggio league *g*
Ruth, first time I was taught this story outside my home was in an early ’60s women’s college “Bible as Literature” class. They drew from numerous sources and were very focused on womens’ roles.
You don’t need to explain anything. Art is art :-)
What’s interesting to me is how the turn towards naturalism is embodied in her work. Her first major piece, Susanna and the Elders, is considerably more conventional for the time, and while astonishingly good for a first effort (she was seventeen when she painted it, perhaps with her father’s help) doesn’t exhibit the sheer mastery of light and shadow and texture and drapery she would show a few short years later with Judith Beheading Holofernes.
Just didn’t want anyone to struggle with tactfully breaking it to me *g*
I looked at the Klimpt work when I was writing this, here’s a link. The work is on Artchive, and it belongs there. Klimpt’s Judith I seems to connect sex and death, probably not something either Caravaggio or Gentileschi would have painted.
Notice the difference between the look on Gentileschi’s women and those of the Caravaggio. He doesn’t credit the women with the force of their genuine feelings, and seems to give them more conventional emotions, those he thinks they should have had.
Hooray Hooray Real women are just as murderous as real men.
I always found this a disgusting story that debases women and femininity.
Which brings up another matter: Justice wasn’t always blind. She carried both a balance and a sword in Roman times; it was only a couple hundred years before this painting that Justice was blindfolded and her sword removed. Perhaps Gentileschi reminds us that Justice once knew and saw her target well.
That’s new and fascinating info here.
Yes indeed.
There is something tentative and reserved about Caravaggio’s Judith. Much like a good girl determined to complete an assignment not of her own choosing. Gentileschi’s appear to be wholeheartedly into the task.
Thanks for this masaccio. Engaging topic for a saturday afternoon.
I’ve seen a lot of statues of Justice, blindfolded with a sword in one hand and scales hanging from the other. I suspect that the blindfold is to protect the onlookers – justice is fierce.
(Try, if you can find it, Stealing the Elf King’s Roses by Diane Duane – the lead character is a female lawyer. Her description of actual justice in the courtroom is impressive.)
I came upon the story of Judith in my grandparents Douay bible, and since I was named Judith took it very much to heart.
Klimt’s Judith is in the femme fatale tradition of the late 19th century, woman as temptress, seductress. Her sex is all.
Gentlileschi’s Judith, on the other hand, is doing a job of work: her sensuality may have been in Holoferne’s mind, but she’s getting down to the business of saving herself and her people, which takes muscle and concentration.
And I can’t help but think that after rape, torture and a trial, Gentlileschi was happy portraying a woman at work, and on a man who posed a threat.
Thanks, masaccio.
My two cents: Is it not the case that the Renaissance painters and sculptures were compelled to choose biblical subjects by the church? Thus all their expression was through these characters and not always motivated by religious fervor.
But regardless of motivation and whether by a great master or in current day movies I am personally offended by violence no matter how “beautifully” and skillfully it is portrayed.
I wonder at the cultural power of this co-mingling of the explicit sexuality and violence with religious teaching and experience from childhood onward
Trivia note. Klimt painted his women as full nudes then decorated them. His work is at least more honest in its sexuality and the perversion of death as ecstasy.
Art imitated life at the time — unlike now when art and life are virtually inseparable except by the side of the keyboard/screen on which one sits.
The beheading is violent; it should horrify deeply the viewer, while encouraging meditation on the meaning of the act. Think of other important works which depict violence and how much they have added to our culture — like Picasso’s Guernica. Seeing that piece as a kid growing up during the Vietnam War only cemented my belief that war should be resorted to only as an ultimate and final measure of defense when all other means have been exhausted.
With regard to this painting, we are asked to picture the fear and rage required to bring a mere woman to this pass; what would it take for a person who was not accorded the rights of man, treated as chattel, considered an exploitable resource for satiation of bodily urges, to plot steadily and act coolly to effect, until taking up a heavy sword and dealing with a threat to her people?
And what of the woman who wielded the brush, against whom violence had been perpetuated — does that violence have no right to counter-expression in a manner which harms no one but captures the rage forever on canvas?
The real horror isn’t in that paint; the paint is only a reflection of real violence elsewhere.
There was an exhibition in 2001-2002 at the Met, St. Louis, and Venice: Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi. Although I didn’t get to see it, the exhibition catalog that accompanied it is wonderful, and the colors are gorgeous. And it is in English!
I love the powerful composition here that moves the eye from dramatic blood red left (of the drapery), then right, to Judith’s massive arms and head; then incredibly, down to his almost severed head before shooting up to see the maid. Like whiplash.
Wonderfully said, Rayne.
Thoughtful response which I will reflect on.I honor what you gain from it. However incorporating this painting and into religious belief, first in the myth in the scripture then this pictorial representation I believe imparts to the growing child and devout adult worshiper a depiction of woman the seducer and bloody killer.
Yes tormented women kill and have I am certain as long as men have. But my feminism does not accept equality of rights as equivalent to replication of violence done toward them.,.
The myth of Judith provides a justifying context. Guernica did not suggest Franco was murdering for just cause.
The force of that argument almost makes me think that a spiritual component is an appendage, a sop to the regular people. You are saying she appropriated the Judith story to express a personal and deep truth. This is a real dilemma.
Every painter makes choices before putting brush to canvas. Given that she was in many ways a trailblazer for women artists in her day, I would not be surprised at all that she chose to put the story of Judith on canvas. You might say she’s painting what she knows: a strong woman living in a man’s world.
Which is not to say the spiritual component of the painting is an appendage added on as a sop. There are various biblical stories featuring strong women, and she seems to have painted many of them. She puts women forward as people in their own right, not merely as appendages to men.
Consider for example her depiction of David and Bathsheba. Bathsheba is front and center, surrounded by her maids, while David is this blip in the background.
Similarly, she shows Esther — another woman trying to save her people when the men have failed — in a manner that shows her to be more than the equal of Ahasuerus. She is seen in the light, while he is more in darkness and shadows. She stands, while he is pushing to get out of his chair to come to her.
I know nothing of her spirituality and religious beliefs, but her choices of biblical women as subjects for her work and the manner in which she depicts them tells me that the stories are deeply meaningful to her.
Um, which story are you talking about?
So women should never fight back?
Indeed. I hearken back to Masasccio’s contrast of Gentileschi’s Judith with the male painters’ depictions of Judith. (For example, here’s a rather dainty Judith who doesn’t look like she possesses the strength, physical or psychic, to con her way into an enemy camp and behead the chief of her people’s enemies. The maid, on the other hand, likely could have pulled that off.)
There’s a lot of layers to the onion. We don’t know whether Gentileschi was painting consciously or unconsciously in realizing the depths of passion present in this painting, whether she deliberately appropriated the religious, but compare her piece again to the Caravaggio.
What struck me about the Caravaggio version is the resonance between the face of Judith and that of Vermeer’s milkmaid pouring from a pitcher. Save for the deeper vertical furrowing in Judith’s forehead as compared to the slight tension in the milkmaid’s face, you’d have thought both were merely handmaidens executing a task. Only the scowl of the crone belies the other deeper passions on the part of Carvaggio’s women.
And then there are Gentileschi’s feminine cohort of the time. If we look at the works they produced, like that of Giovanna Garzoni, Lavinia Fontana, Clara Peeters or Judith Leyster or Josefa Ayala, there’s a dramatic difference in the quality and richness of the work let alone the intensity depicted. Definitely something much deeper at work inside Gentileschi.
[edit: OMG yes, much, much deeper. I didn't realize that Gentileschi had also painted "Yael and Sisera" (Giaele e Sisara) in which Yael assassinates Sisera single-handedly.]
Strength is defined as the capacity to murder?
the story of Judith — the enlisting her to abuse her sexuality then exploit it in the service of killing. This is religious enlightenment?
When you take on the traits of your tormentors you become no different. than them. I believe a serious error modern day feminists have made is to attempt to prove their worth by aping traditional male traits. being “as good a man as you”
Rather than as the earlier feminists advocated; equal value and rights and benefits for those expressing traditional female traits of nurture, collaboration, and creativity.
I understand the idea that feminism might lead away from war towards peace, from violence to negotiation. But it’s hard to apply those ideas to these Bible stories. The people who told these stories weren’t feminists, and the stories weren’t designed to reinforce feminism.
In the same way, Gentileschi isn’t a feminist, and her paintings weren’t intended to reinforce any feminist theory. As Peterr puts it, she was a strong woman living in a man’s world, and she painted Bible stories of strong women living in a man’s world.
To me, this feels like insisting that our ancestors live up to our ideals, as in the controversy over the love life of Thomas Jefferson. We measure people in the context of their times, not ours.
Like most women, and most people, of her day, Gentileschi doesn’t seem to have been well-educated, she learned to read when she was older. She would have grown up listening to Bible stories, and probably not a lot of other stories. As Talking Stick points out, there was a strong tradition of painting biblical stories anyway. She chose to paint the ones that resonated with her, and as you say, these stories clearly moved her.
It is probably a mistake on my part to assume that we could read the spiritual pull of the story separately from the personal/emotional pull of the story. In the post I pointed out that the spiritual side of Judith in the Bible is internal, not externally directed. The artist made that clear in the painting, and that has to be enough.
We don’t, and probably can’t, peel those layers by looking at the art on its own. I think I ask too much of a single painting. And maybe it isn’t a good question anyway, asking to understand the motivation of the artist at all.
Hi Ruth! I went to Smith. Go Seven Sisters!
Yes, the Apocrypha was termed to be too “dangerous” and mystical for mass consumption. If you’ve ever read The Poisonwood Bible, you’d remember how the crazy minister father adored this section of the Bible and his wife and children held it in great suspicion.
Rape victims I know really admire this painting– it gives them a feeling of vicarious vengeance or some other very human feeling of justice that they will most likely never be able to have in real life, since most rapes go unreported and not on to trial.
Rape, especially within a human evolutionary framework, is considered to be a deep affront to the social contract between humans. I’ve read that there are some female apes that will tear a male member limb-from-limb if he should dare try to rape one of the females. Since it is so damaging to the victim and to society, the feeling of justice that is elicited from ALL viewers is understandable. Also, the fact that this feeling of justice is intermingled with horror makes for one pretty powerful image.
I don’t advocate the killing of rapists (or of any men), but I know that this painting probably provided Artemisia with the same deep satisfaction that it does for rape victims of our time.
It’s a testimony to the power of that painting. To me, that is what feminism really means: giving women the power to speak and act for themselves. The story of Judith is exactly that. She has the power to act for herself and does so with confidence.