Юдифь, обезглавливающая Олоферна

Gentileschi painted this version around 1620 in Florence, for Grand Duke Cosimo de' Medici, who had seen an earlier one she made in Naples and wanted his own. The subject is from the Book of Judith. A widow talks her way into the tent of the enemy general Holofernes and, once he is drunk and asleep, cuts off his head to save her city. Most painters made Judith dainty and reluctant. Gentileschi makes it labour. Two women brace their whole weight against the man's thrashing body, sleeves pushed back, the sword driven down with real force, blood spraying in arcs across the sheets. She had reason to know the weight of such a scene. A few years earlier she had been raped by a fellow painter and had testified against him through a public trial. In the Florence version she added a bracelet to Judith's arm engraved with the image of Artemis, the huntress goddess who shares her name.