Giuditta con la testa di Oloferne

Fede Galizia signed and dated this Judith in 1596, when she was about 18 and already a working painter in Milan. That is worth pausing on: a young woman, trained in her father's miniaturist workshop, taking on the story of Judith, who saved her city by beheading the enemy general Holofernes. Galizia shows the calm aftermath, the heroine displaying the severed head while her servant holds the golden basin. Many scholars think the proud face of Judith is Galizia's own, a quiet self-portrait pressed into a biblical subject. The Ringling's canvas is the earliest of six versions she made of the scene, and the fabrics and jewels are rendered with the precision she had learned copying miniatures.