Judith and Maidservant with Head of Holofernes

Most painters showed Judith in the act of killing the enemy general Holofernes. Artemisia Gentileschi here chooses the tense minute afterward. The deed is done, the maidservant is bundling the severed head into a sack, and Judith freezes, one hand raised to shield a candle flame, listening for whether the camp has woken. A single candle lights the whole scene, catching the gold of her sleeve and leaving everything else in deep shadow. That way of painting by one hidden light came out of Naples, where Artemisia was working and where the example of Caravaggio still shaped a generation of painters. She returned to this exact moment more than once. This version, from the 1640s, hangs in the Capodimonte museum, in the city where she made it.