Judith Beheading Holofernes

Artemisia Gentileschi painted Judith Beheading Holofernes around 1620, one of several versions of this dramatic Old Testament subject she returned to throughout her career. In the Book of Judith, the widow Judith saves her people by seducing the Assyrian general Holofernes and then decapitating him in his tent. Artemisia's treatments of this subject are among the most physically direct and formally accomplished in the entire tradition of this popular Baroque subject: Judith and her maidservant work together with concentrated, purposeful effort, the violence rendered without flinching. Her version in the Uffizi is sometimes read as a document of personal experience, but it also represents the summit of her technical ability in rendering the dramatic intersection of the sacred and the violent.

The powerful diagonal composition and the spurting blood create an image of unprecedented physical violence in the depiction of this subject, with Artemisia's Caravaggesque lighting heightening the visceral drama of the execution.