Judite e Holofernes

This is a small corner of a very large ceiling. When Michelangelo began the Sistine Chapel vault in 1508, he set four Old Testament scenes of rescue into its awkward corners, and this is one of them. It comes from the Book of Judith: a widow of a besieged Jewish town has gone to the enemy general Holofernes, got him drunk, and cut off his head. Michelangelo catches the tense minute after. Judith and her maid balance the covered head on a platter, and Judith turns to look back toward the tent, where the headless body still twitches, one leg kicking. Florentines like Michelangelo had long read Judith as the image of a tyrant overthrown, a charged subject in a city that kept expelling its rulers. Up on the vault she sits high in a corner, easy to walk under without seeing what she carries.