Judith and her maidservant with the head of Holofernes

Most paintings of this story show the killing itself, the sword going through the neck of the sleeping general Holofernes. This one shows the seconds afterward. Judith and her maidservant have turned toward a sound, caught mid-motion, listening for whether anyone in the enemy camp has woken. The severed head sits in a wicker basket with the blood still dripping. It was painted around 1608, in the years just after Caravaggio had shown Rome how a single hard light could make a Bible scene feel like it is happening right now. The deep blue of Judith's dress is real ultramarine, the most expensive pigment a painter could buy, a sign this was a costly commission. For a long time the picture was given to Orazio Gentileschi. The museum in Oslo now lists it under both Orazio and his daughter Artemisia, herself one of the great painters of the century, and whose hand did what here is still argued over.