A woman entered an enemy army camp. When the guards stop her, she says she is willing to share her people's secrets with the ranking general. But he is not actually a traitor.
On her fourth day under the general's protection, she waits for him to get drunk and beheads him, saving her people from his cruelty. This is the biblical story of how the heroine Judith killed the brutal Holofernes.
It features in numerous works of art, including the Sistine Chapel.
But the most famous picture of them all was painted by an artist who tackled this ambitious scene when she was just 19 years old.
Her name was Artemisia Gentileschi, although many scholars call her simply Artemisia, like other Italian masters.
So who was Artemisia, and what sets her portrayal apart from the rest?
Artemisia received her artistic training from her father, Orazio Gentileschi. He trained him in the new style of dramatic painting pioneered by the painter Caravaggio.
This style, known as Baroque, was built on the traditions of the early Renaissance. While Renaissance artists focused on imitating the classical Greeks, depicting moments of calm or serenity amidst intensity, Baroque artists emphasized the climactic moment of the story with dynamic action.
Baroque works also dial up the drama through extreme contrasts of light and dark, called chiaroscuro or tenebrism. Taken together, the effect is a more direct emotional appeal to the viewer.
Although Artemisia was influenced by Caravaggio's style,
by many accounts, her rendering closely resembles the Old Master's depiction of the same story.
Like Artemisia, Caravaggio focused on the moment of the beheading, dramatically emphasizing the contrast of light and dark and the gore. But his painting lacks the visual impact of Artemisia.
Whereas Caravaggio's heroine keeps her distance from this bloody act, Artemisia's Judith rolls up her sleeves and binds her knee to the bed to meet Holofernes's resistance.
There's a height to his body that makes the action believable, and the slimy streams of blood soaking the sheets are very natural. The blood spurting from Caravaggio's severed artery seems cold and artificial by comparison. And yet this is not even his most famous painting of the scene.
He completed this painting in 1613,
shortly after marrying and moving to Florence, where he found professional success after a very difficult period in his life. In 1611, one of her father's associates, Agostino Tassi, nicknamed "lo Smargiasso" or "the scoundrel", raped her.
When Artemisia told her father, he filed charges for the crime of "forcible violation of virginity"—a designation that implied Tassi had damaged Orazio's property.
Rape laws center almost entirely on young women's bodies as owned by their fathers. Tassi's trial lasted seven months, during which Artemisia was interrogated and tortured with thumb screws because she testified against him.
Tassi was eventually found guilty,
but his powerful patrons managed to overturn his conviction. Some scholars have suggested that Artemisia began the painting while the trial was underway.
Many have debated whether the rape affected her work. Artemisia revisits the theme of Judith again and again. One painting shows Judith and her maid trying to escape from an enemy camp.
Here, Artemisia adds a small ornament to Judith's hair, a reference to Michelangelo, possibly referring to Florence's patron David. At the tip of the sword is a screaming Gorgon or Medusa—both female archetypes that evoke the rage and power that associate the work with Caravaggio.
Artemisia painted her most famous portrait of Judith between 1618 and 1620. This composition is similar to his first painting of 1613, but has details that make sense to those who look closely.
The sword more directly resembles the crucifixion, enhancing the sense that Judith's vengeance was a holy act ordained by God.
Artemisia also added a bracelet bearing the goddess of the hunt - her name, Artemis. This signature is one of the many ways in which his art conforms to a sentiment he expressed near the end of his life: "The works will speak for themselves."
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