Judith

Simon Vouet painted this while living in Rome in the 1620s, where he had spent more than a decade soaking up the dark, dramatic lighting Caravaggio had made the talk of the city. His subject is Judith, the heroine of the Book of Judith, who saved her town by getting the enemy general Holofernes drunk and then cutting off his head. Vouet shows her just after: richly dressed, the sword still in her hand, calmly lifting the severed head out of the shadows toward us. Cropping biblical heroines at the waist like this was a fashion of the moment, sold in sets or as companion pieces. Vouet carried the manner home to France, where he became the king's leading painter.