Caravaggio's "Judith Beheading Holofernes"
"Judith Slaying Holofernes" by Caravaggio
When I was quite young I came across this painting of the prophetess who, according the story I read, used her gender to trick a malevolent general into thinking that she was harmless. Judith got the general drunk off wine and then while he slept peacefully, severed his head from his body with a razor-sharp sword. I later came across this portrait at the Minneapolis Institute of Art some years ago and was reminded that the painting was so intriguing to me. I hadn't really seen such a forceful and strong depiction of a woman at such a young age before...it wasn't that I found the part of the painting where she kills the evil man interesting, it was the look on her face, that look of determined and summoned strength, and the act itself of murder, almost a justified murder...was it? Hmm... I thought it was so peculiar that this painting would stick in my memory and come back years later. It's like a long lost existentialist-type memory...or maybe this is all bullshit. Well, that's neither here, not there I guess. I just admire the woman's courage and her ability to draw the needed strength out of the necessity of saving her people. It's kind of a morbid and dark painting, but I rather like it.
I found the following analysis of the painting interesting so I have included it here:
"A whole book in the Bible is devoted to Judith, because as a woman she embodies the power of the people of Israel to defeat the enemy, though superior in numbers, by means of cunning and courage. She seeks out Holofernes in his tent, makes him drunk, then beheads him. The sight of their commander's bloodstained head on the battlements of Bethulia puts the enemy to flight.
In the painting, Judith comes in with her maid - surprisingly and menacingly - from the right, against the direction of reading the picture. The general is lying naked on a white sheet. Paradoxically, his bed is distinguished by a magnificent red curtain, whose colour crowns the act of murder as well as the heroine's triumph.
The first instance in which Caravaggio would chose such a highly dramatic subject, the Judith is an expression of an allegorical-moral contest in which Virtue overcomes Evil. In contrast to the elegant and distant beauty of the vexed Judith, the ferocity of the scene is concentrated in the inhuman scream and the body spasm of the giant Holofernes. Caravaggio has managed to render, with exceptional efficacy, the most dreaded moment in a man's life: the passage from life to death. The upturned eyes of Holofernes indicate that he is not alive any more, yet signs of life still persist in the screaming mouth, the contracting body and the hand that still grips at the bed. The original bare breasts of Judith, which suggest that she has just left the bed, were later covered by the semi-transparent blouse.
The roughness of the details and the realistic precision with which the horrific decapitation is rendered (correct down to the tiniest details of anatomy and physiology) has led to the hypothesis that the painting was inspired by two highly publicized contemporary Roman executions; that of Giordano Bruno and above all of Beatrice Cenci in 1599."