Judith and her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes

Artemisia painted this in Naples around 1639, and she chose the quiet part of the story. Not the killing itself, which she had shown before in all its blood, but the seconds just after: Judith, the widow who has just beheaded the enemy general Holofernes, is handing the severed head to her servant, both women alert, still listening, not yet safe. For a long time the picture was known only from a single old black-and-white photograph, and nobody was sure it was really hers. When the National Museum in Oslo bought it in 2022 and cleaned it, they found her signature hidden where you would least look, written into the blade of Judith's sword.