Judith and the Head of Holofernes

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Judith and the Head of Holofernes: Gustave Klimt

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Gustave Klimt Oil Painting - Judith and the Head of Holofernes

Keywords: Judith, Head, Holofernes

Work Overview: Judith and the Head of Holofernes
Gustav Klimt
Date: 1901
Style: Art Nouveau (Modern)
Period: Golden phase
Genre: literary painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 42 x 84 cm
Location: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

Judith and the Head of Holofernes (also known as Judith I) is an oil painting by Gustav Klimt created in 1901. It depicts the biblical character of Judith holding the severed head of Holofernes.

When Klimt tackles the biblical theme of Judith, the historical course of art has already codified its main interpretation and preferential raffiguration[clarification needed]. In fact, many paintings exist, describing the episode in a heroic manner, especially expressing Judith's courage and her virtuous nature. Judith appears as God's instrument of salvation, but the violence of her action cannot be denied and is dramatically shown in Caravaggio's rendering,[2] as well as those of Gentileschi and Bigot.[3] Other representations have chosen the subsequent moment, when a dazed Judith holds Holofernes' severed head, as Moreau and Allori anticipate in their suggestive mythological paintings.[4]

Klimt deliberately ignores any narrative reference whatsoever, and concentrates his pictorial rendering solely on to Judith, so much so that he cuts off Holofernes' head at the right margin. And there is no trace of bloodied sword, as if the heroine would have used a different weapon: an omission that legitimates association with Salome.[5] The moment preceding the killing — the seduction of Nebuchadnezzar's general — seems to coalesce with the conclusive part of the story.

Judith I reveals a curious symbolic and compositional consonance with The Sin by Franz Stuck:[7] the temptation illustrated by the German painter becomes the model for Klimt's femme fatale by suggesting the posture of the disrobed and evanescent body as focal piece of the canvas, as well as the facial set. Judith's force originates from the close-up and the solidity of posture, rendered by the orthogonal projection of lines: to the body's verticality (and that of Holofernes') corresponds the horizontal parallels in the lower margin: those of the arm, the shoulders joined by the collier, and finally the hair base.

Judith's face exudes a mixed charge of voluptuousness and perversion. Its traits are transfigured so as to obtain the greatest degree of intensity and seduction, which Klimt achieves by placing the woman on an unattainable plane. Notwithstanding the alteration of features, one can recognise Klimt's friend and maybe lover, Viennese socialite, Adele Bloch-Bauer, the subject of another two portraits respectively done in 1907 and 1912, and also painted in the Pallas Athena.[9] The slightly lifted head has a sense of pride, whereas her visage is languid and sensual, with parted lips in between defiance and seduction. Franz A. J. Szabo describes it best as a, “[symbol of] triumph of the erotic feminine principle over the aggressive masculine one.” Her half-closed gaze, which also ties into an expression of pleasure, directly confronts the viewer of all this. In 1903, author and critic Felix Salten describes Judith’s expression as one “with a sultry fire in her dark glances, cruelty in the lines of her mouth, and nostrils trembling with passion. Mysterious forces seem to be slumbering within this enticing female…” Although Judith had typically been interpreted as the pious widow simply fulfilling a higher duty, in Judith I she is a paradigm of the femme fatale Klimt repeatedly portrayed in his work. The contrast between the black hair and the golden luminosity of the background enhance elegance and exaltation. The fashionable hairdo is emphasized by the stylised motifs of the trees fanning on the sides.[10] Her disheveled dark green, semi-sheer garment, giving the viewer a view of nearly bare torso, alludes to the fact that Judith beguiled the general Holofernes before decapitating him.

In the 1901 version, Judith maintains a magnetic fascination and sensuality, subsequently abandoned by Klimt in his Judith II, where she acquires sharper traits and a fierce expression. In its formal qualities, the first version illustrates a heroine with the archetypal features of the bewitching and charming ladies described by symbolist artists and writers such as Wilde, Vasnetsov, Moreau, and others.[11] She revels in her power and sexuality—so much so, critics mislabeled Klimt's Judith as Salome, the title character from Oscar Wilde’s 1891 tragedy. To stress and reemphasize that the woman was actually Judith and not Salome he had his brother, Georg, make the metal frame for him with “Judith and Holofernes” engraved on it.

Dressed in a beautiful gown the widow Judith succeeds in seducing the enemy warlord Holofernes. In his tent she decapitates him.

Klimt emphasized the erotic tension of the moment. His Judith seems to be in ecstasy: eyes half closed, open mouth, her dress in disarray. She is a femme fatale: a dominant woman who uses her beauty in order to humiliate a man.

The artist was obviously fascinated by the subject of Death and Sexuality, or Eros and Thanatos. Many contemporaries, such as Sigmund Freud, shared his interest.

The work is somewhat like a Byzantine icon, with lavish use of gold leaf in the background and on the Jugendstil frame. The frame was made by Gustav's brother Georg.

This is the Vienna version. There is an almost identical version in the Galerie Vytvarneho Umeni, Ostrava, Czech Republic, where the dress is more blue. Eight years on Klimt would make another Judith.

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Klimt depicts Judith as a femme fatale. She looks down on the viewer, her mouth voluptuously open and with her right hand she strokes the hair of Holofernes. The mountains, the fig trees and the vine stock refer to an Assyrian relief on the Palace of Sennacherib as a biblical place. Judith, also often mentioned as Salome, is a chase widow who defeats the haughty military leader of the Assyrians by plain ruse without seducing Holofernes and in a weak moment decapitates him. Klimt’s brother Ernst made the frame. The painting was first shown at the 8th International Art exhibition in Munich 1901.

The account of the beheading of Holofernes by Judith is given in the deuterocanonical book of Judith, and is the subject of numerous depictions in painting and sculpture. In the story, Judith, a beautiful widow, is able to enter the tent of Holofernes because of his desire for her. Holofernes was an Assyria|Assyrian general who was about to destroy Judith's home, the city of Bethulia, though the story is emphatic that no "defilement" takes place. Overcome with drink, he passes out and is Decapitation|decapitated by Judith; his head is taken away in a basket (often depicted as carried by an elderly female servant). Artists have mainly chosen one of two possible scenes (with or without the servant): the decapitation, with Holofernes prone on the bed, or the heroine holding or carrying the head. An exception is an early sixteenth-century stained glass window with two scenes. The central scene, by far the largest of the two, features Judith and Holofernes seated at a banquet. The smaller background scene has Judith and her servant stick Holofernes' head in a sack, the headless body standing behind with his arm waving helplessly. In European art, Judith is very often accompanied by her maid at her shoulder, which helps to distinguish her from Salome, who also carries her victim's head on a silver charger (plate). However, a Northern tradition developed whereby Judith had both a maid and a charger, famously taken by Erwin Panofsky as an example of the knowledge needed in the study of iconography. For many artists and scholars, Judith's sexualized femininity interestingly and sometimes contradictorily combined with her masculine aggression. Judith was one of the virtuous women whom Van Beverwijck mentioned in his published apology (1639) for the superiority of women to men,Loughman & J.M. Montias (1999) Public and Private Spaces. Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses, p. 81. and a common example of the Power of Women iconographic theme in the Northern Renaissance.

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