Judith and Holofernes

By about 1650, when this was painted in Venice, the story of Judith was a subject Italian painters returned to again and again. A widow from the town of Bethulia, she saves her people by entering the tent of the Assyrian general Holofernes, letting him drink himself to sleep, and cutting off his head. Régnier shows the moment just after. There is no struggle in it: Judith stands near the front, calm and half-turned, the sword still in her hand and the severed head beside her, thrown into hard light against the dark. He came back to this heroine several times over his life, and versions of his Judith survive in a number of collections. The Venice canvas was cleaned only recently and shown in 2021 among the Accademia's 17th- and 18th-century Venetian paintings.