Judith tenant la tête d'Holopherne

The biblical book of Judith gave painters a heroine and a horror in one scene. Judith, a widow from the besieged Jewish town of Bethulia, went to the tent of the Assyrian general Holofernes, got him drunk, and cut off his head to save her people. Veronese painted this in Venice around 1575, at the height of his fame for shimmering colour and rich fabric. He dresses Judith in worldly finery and keeps her calm, almost reluctant, as she hands the severed head to her waiting maidservant, who takes it into a sack. The dark head and the pale beauty are held in the same quiet moment. The canvas later became a prize of the great Habsburg collector Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who acquired it for Vienna in 1659.