Portrait of Judith with the Head of Holofernes

Judith has just killed Holofernes, the enemy general besieging her city, and holds his severed head by the hair while her old servant waits with the sack to carry it away. It was one of the most painted subjects of the age, a woman who saves her people through an act of violence. The Uffizi lists this version under Rubens, though that attribution is not settled. Rubens designed a Judith early in his career that was widely copied and turned into a popular engraving, so separating his own hand from a workshop version or a later copy is genuinely hard, and scholars have gone back and forth. The strong light falls where the story does, on Judith's face, her bare arm, and the dead man's head.