Judith Beheading Holofernes

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Judith Beheading Holofernes: Caravaggio

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Caravaggio Oil Painting - Judith Beheading Holofernes

Keywords: Judith, Beheading, Holofernes

Work Overview: Judith Beheading Holofernes
Italian: Giuditta e Oloferne
Artist Caravaggio
Year c.1602
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 145 cm × 195 cm (57 in × 77 in)
Location Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica at Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Judith Beheading Holofernes is a painting of Judith beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio, painted in c.1602. The widow Judith first charms the Assyrian general Holofernes, then decapitates him in his tent. The painting was rediscovered in 1950 and is part of the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome.

The deutero-canonical Book of Judith tells how Judith served her people by seducing and pleasuring Holofernes, the Assyrian general. Judith gets Holofernes drunk, then seizes her sword and slays him: "Approaching to his bed, she took hold of the hair of his head." (Judith, 13:7-8).

Caravaggio's approach was, typically, to choose the moment of greatest dramatic impact, the moment of the decapitation itself. The figures are set out in a shallow stage, theatrically lit from the side, isolated against the inky, black background. Judith and her maid Abra stand to the right, partially over Holofernes, who is vulnerable on his back. X-rays have revealed that Caravaggio adjusted the placement of Holofernes' head as he proceeded, separating it slightly from the torso and moving it slightly to the right. The faces of the three characters demonstrate his mastery of emotion, Judith in particular showing in her face a mix of determination and repulsion. Artemisia Gentileschi and others were deeply influenced by this work, and even surpassed Caravaggio's physical realism, but it has been argued that none matched his capture of Judith's psychological ambivalence.[1]

The model for Judith is probably the Roman courtesan Fillide Melandroni, who posed for several other works by Caravaggio around this year; the scene itself, and especially the details of blood and decapitation, were presumably drawn from his observations of the public execution of Beatrice Cenci a few years before.

A painting believed by some to be Caravaggio's second version of Judith Beheading Holofernes was discovered in Toulouse in 2014. An export ban was placed on the painting by the French government while tests were carried out to establish its authenticity.

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.

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Caravaggio’s mastery of art in Judith Beheading Holofernes distracts, somewhat, from the weirdness of the painting. Dressed as a well-born Renaissance young lady, Judith, standing at a safe distance, does the deed which made her famous. As for the brutal Assyrian general Holofernes, he is caught completely off-guard. Primed for a night of hijinks with this refined young widow, he just barely manages to utter a shocked scream as his own sword goes through his neck. The blood flows, rather decorously, like so much red yarn, over his white bed linens. Judith’s elderly maidservant eagerly holds the bag that will soon contain Holofernes’ head.

Caravaggio’s Mastery
If the painting exists to extol the Jewish heroine, it also exists to showcase Caravaggio’s mastery of chiaroscuro and the expressiveness that can be found in the human face and body. Like much of Caravaggio’s work, the scene is brightly lit against a mysteriously dark background. A rich fold of red velvet at the top of the painting, also painted in sumptuous light and shadow, hints that it’s the curtain pulled back to admit Judith and the maidservant into Holofernes’ tent. The artist also uses light and dark to outline the massive, hairless muscles of the general as he discovers that he doesn’t even have time to pull away from what’s being done to him.

The brightness of the light that falls on Judith illuminates her youthful flesh and the clean linen of her bodice and emphasizes her virtue. The sweep of her skirt asserts that she’s recoiling from all this, as well she might. The look on her face confirms to the viewer that she’s finding such hands on decapitation very distasteful, and it’s frankly hilarious. Her brows knit together as if she’s been presented with a chicken to pluck and clean after putting on her best party dress. At least she’s rolled up her sleeves.

Fascinated Disgust
Caravaggio’s old serving woman, however, is a small masterpiece within a masterpiece. Her skin as leathery and tanned as the bag she carries, Caravaggio does much with her wrinkles, her large, elderly ears, the wisps of gray hair that just manage to peek out from beneath her cap. The look on her face is priceless and can be described as fascinated disgust and pure hatred. Holofernes has been a scourge of her people, and she wants to see his blood. Unlike Judith, the viewer thinks she wouldn’t even mind if a spot or two of it got on her.

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Three figures with a red drape in the background: just a few elements, yet capable of orchestrating an utterly realistic theater of contrasts: darkness and light, age and youth, life and death, strength and frailty.
Judith is one of the heroines of the Old Testament, a young Jewish widow who saved her people from the besieging Assyrian army. She pretended to ally herself with the enemy and slew their general Holofernes with her own hands, after being welcomed to his camp with a festive banquet.
The iconography had been common since the 1400s, yet it had never been depicted with such harsh and spectacular realism.
Here we see scimitar plunged deep into Holofernes’ throat. Life is still coursing through Holofernes’ contracted hands and limbs, though not for much longer. The general’s mouth gapes in a strangled cry, and we see the spurting blood, as if Caravaggio wished to freeze the flashing instants of an act that cannot be halted with the gaze. The light falls from the top left, striking Judith’s slender figure in full: her forehead is furrowed, as if seeking to summon all her strength, both physical and spiritual, to overcome her revulsion at the act she feels compelled to perform. Her maidservant Abra, a young woman in the original story, is here a wrinkled old woman with hallucinated eyes, bearing witness to the horror that the viewer feels before such violence. The painting, dated to around 1599, is important stylistically and thematically: it is Caravaggio’s first historical work, and marks the beginning of the phase of strongly contrasting light and darkness. The work was commissioned by Ottavio Costa, a banker, who was so enamored of it that he stipulated its inalienability in his will. However, all trace of the painting was lost for several centuries and it was only found in 1951 by the restorer Pico Cellini, almost by chance, in the possession of a family and reported to the art critic Roberto Longhi – a dramatic turn of events highly appropriate to the theatrical nature of the painting. Twenty years later it was acquired by the Italian state and exhibited in Palazzo Barberini.

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