Giuditta

Valentin de Boulogne was a Frenchman who went to Rome in the 1610s and fell completely under the spell of Caravaggio, the harsh raking light, the models pulled straight off the street. He painted this Judith there in the 1620s. She is the widow from the Book of Judith who has just walked into the enemy general's tent, got him drunk, and cut off his head to save her besieged town. Valentin catches the moment after. The severed head lies on the cloth, the sword is still in her hand, and her face is not triumphant but strangely emptied out. The light falls hard from one side and leaves the rest in shadow, the trick he had learned in Rome. He died there young, at about forty.