Judith Inspired by an Angel

In 1697 Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole, one of the most celebrated painters in Bologna, spent time in Verona and painted this canvas for the Giusti, the family whose palace and Renaissance garden lie across the river from the old town. Less than a century later Goethe walked in that garden and admired its cypresses.

The subject is Judith, the widow of Bethulia who went into the camp of the Assyrian general Holofernes and cut off his head. Painters in Caravaggio's wake liked to show that killing at its most immediate. Dal Sole, as the museum puts it, replaces it with a courtly, psychological preamble. Judith is being presented to the general, and the angel at her side suggests how she should behave. The angel has a footing in the text. In the Latin Bible read in Dal Sole's day, Judith comes home and says that the Lord's angel kept her, going there, staying there and coming back. The painting came to the museum as a gift of the Cassa di Risparmio di Verona, the city's savings bank.