Judith with the Head of Holofernes

The Book of Judith tells of a widow from Bethulia, a Jewish town besieged by the Assyrian army, who goes into the enemy camp, wins the trust of the general Holofernes and, when he lies drunk in his tent, cuts off his head with his own sword. Catholic Bibles count the book as scripture. Dutch Protestant Bibles printed it among the Apocrypha, and painters in the Republic went on painting the story all the same.

Van Dijk shows the moment after the killing. Judith rests one hand on the sword hilt and holds the head by the hair with the other, while her old maid looks up at her. He signed and dated the panel at the upper left in 1726. It is small, about 28 by 30 centimetres, a biblical scene meant to be looked at closely in a private room. By 1731 it belonged to Stadholder William IV in Leeuwarden, and it stayed with the House of Orange until 1795. The Mauritshuis owns it and shows it in the Gallery Prince Willem V in The Hague.