Judite e Holofernes

Around 1495 Mantegna, court painter to the rulers of Mantua, was making a series of small pictures painted only in shades of grey to imitate carved stone reliefs. This Judith is one of them, worked in tempera with touches of gold and silver, so that the figures look like a marble cameo brought to life. The subject is the biblical widow Judith, who has just cut off the head of the Assyrian general Holofernes to save her besieged town. Mantegna shows the calm aftermath, Judith lowering the head into a sack held by her maid, the general's foot still visible at the edge of the tent. There is no blood, no drama of the act itself. The whole appeal is the illusion of sculpture, a painter proving he could out-carve the sculptors he admired from ancient Rome.