Judith and Holofernes

The story comes from the Book of Judith. A widow from the besieged town of Bethulia walks into the Assyrian camp, gets the general Holofernes drunk and cuts off his head. Here that drama is turned right down. The Prado's catalogue says the biblical subjects in this group barely serve as pretexts for exotic costume, court ceremony and bare skin, and it picks out this canvas as one of the two where the modelling of the nude carries the most weight. The shape explains the rest. It is 119 centimetres wide and 58 high, one of six long panels that ran around an oval centre showing the purification of the Midianite spoils. The whole scheme was made for a secular room, and Tintoretto painted it between 1552 and 1555.