Judith mit dem Haupt des Holofernes

By the time Botticelli painted this, in the late 1490s, Florence was a changed city. The Medici, who had been his patrons, had been driven out, and a Dominican friar named Savonarola was preaching against worldly luxury and burning vanities in the public square. Botticelli, who had once painted Venus rising nude from the sea, was drawn to that stricter mood in his last years, and his work grew more sombre and devout. The subject here is from the Bible: Judith, a widow, has just cut off the head of Holofernes, the enemy general besieging her town, and carries away his sword and his head. Botticelli returned to this story more than once across his career. The small, tense figures and the flat gold-lit sky belong to the tighter, more archaic style he took up at the end.