Judith Slaying Holofernes Analysis

she created two identical versions of the same composition. Although the influence of tenebristic Caravaggio’s style was undeniable for both paintings, the difference was essential in the conceptual development of the theme.

In Caravaggio’s painting, viewers find themselves in the theater, where a red curtain at the top of the painting emphasizes the illusion. On the right, next to her old maidservant Abra, static like a statue, with an emotionless and reserved expression, focused on a mission of killing like a priestess, there is a pretty, almost ethereal, young girl, as Judith. On the left, the twisted body of Holofernes, his agonizing silent scream, his eyes begging for mercy, pose him as a sacral victim. Even the bed has a role

to play, as an altar, and Holofernes’s blood gushes out with three accurate and aesthetically appropriate rivulets.
The scene painted by Artemisia Gentileschi in 1620 was far away from the ceremonial sacrifice as portrayed in Caravaggio’s version, in spite of the similarity in spatial organization, theatricality, and contrasting illumination. The compositional trident of the interwoven bodies of Judith, Holofernes, and her maid creates an incredible visual tension and visceral sensation of the horrific efforts of all participants. The diagonal position of Judith’s hands opposes Holofernes’s body almost symmetrically. The mirrored movements of the maid’s and Holofernes’s hands establish the vertical axis, which coincides with the position of the sword. The focus and compositional center are Holofernes’s head. It feels as if Judith, as a woman, does not have enough strength to chop it off in one quick movement. The streams and gushers of blood have soaked the sheets. Judith, with rolled sleeves, works hard as a slaughterer killing an animal. This analogy and comparison is reinforced by the unusually foreshortened body of Holofernes: his disappearing as if dismembered limbs cause him to lose normal human outlines.
As a woman, Artemisia Gentileschi not only painted her self-portrait, but she also reflected her own personal experience, and a desirable outcome toward her assailant. In the 17th century, the metaphor of the painting as the bloody revenge that turned a woman from a heroine into a man’s murderer was acceptable neither visually nor societally. In reality, such action by women towards men would be and has been punished by death, as happened to Lucrecia Petroni and Beatrice Cenci .
As an artist, Artemisia Gentileschi challenged Caravaggio’s version and others with her skillful and graphic representation of the violent subject. The historical perspective and comparative analysis allows us to determine the unique position of this painting in Western culture. Throughout the history of art, any representation of violence: Christ dying on the cross, St. Sebastian pierced with arrows, St Hippolytus torn by horses, etc., retained an appropriate aesthetic appearance. The limits of visualization being, at first, an unconditional paradigm of the delineation of Christian martyrdom, later progressed into secular art. Images of violence are supposed to induce an array of different feelings, including mental commotion and even the mirrored sensation of pain, but never a revulsion or disgust. Before Artemisia, the bloody gushers had never been painted with such naturalism. Art historians and scholars speculated that Artemisia might have been familiar with Galileo Galilei’s projectile theory and she might also have witnessed the slaughter of domestic animals . The depiction of Judith, without a hint of sexual appeal, nobility, or innocence, fighting in an awkward pose, like a butcher at work, insulted the male gaze and was opposed to the traditional approach of gender role distribution in representation: men act, women appear (John Berger) . As a woman-artist, through the repulsive nature of her painting, Artemisia managed to cross the border towards the raw, disturbing naturalism preceding Goya’s “Saturn Devouring his Children”, “Anatomical Pieces” by Théodore Géricault, and the unfastened realism of the art of the 20th and 21st centuries. As a female artist, she claimed creative equality and even superiorly challenged male artists with her talent and craftsmanship. Although her artistic-feministic statement was disapproved by her contemporaries and her paintings hidden from public view, she was rediscovered in the last century . Beginning in the last quarter of the 20th century, hundreds of books were published, articles were written, the play “Lapis Blue Blood Red” and the movie “Artemisia” were produced, while exhibitions took place to research, analyze, and popularize her place in history. The most important factor that influenced public attention to Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith” specifically and to her art in general was the rise of the feminist movement from 1960 to 1980, with the goal of breaking professional, matrimonial, and sexual gender barriers. Linda Nochlin, in her pivotal 1971 article “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” opens the long list of female artists that had “no subtle essence of femininity” with the name of Artemisia Gentileschi. Her “Judith Slaying Holofernes” became a source for psychoanalytical research. Art historians and scholars such as Joseph Slap, Taylor Graeme, and Marcia Pointon, through major components and minute details, interpreted images of the painting as symbols of childbirth and castration that contributed to the ideas of the socio-political anti-rapist feminist movement. Feminists saw Artemisia as a victim twice: as an artist who was neglected because she was a woman and as a woman who was raped. Created in the 17th century, this painting found an unusual analogy with such feministic movies as “I Spit on Your Grave.” Made in 1978, “I Spit on Your Grave” could be seen as a contemporary interpretation of Gentileschi’s “Judith” concept: the victim becomes a murderer. The main character, Jennifer, after being gang raped, hunts and kills each one of her assailants, one by one. The scene depicting seduction and castration one of the protagonists suggests the idea of “Judith’s” revenge in the postmodern world.
Due to its graphic violence, the movie “I Spit on Your Grave” was criticized, abridged, and banned from some European countries, exactly as Gentileschi’s “Judith” had been hidden in a Uffizi stairwell to spare the viewers from its stressful image. The painting and the movie, in their own way, contextualized the issue of rape, and both of them were subjected to heavy criticism due to disturbing images and proactive women’s positions, each in its own way, and each for its own time period.
But it was more than just feminist ideas of the 20th century that resonated with Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting. “Judith’s” cultural uniqueness was in its cinematographic contemporaneity of the image. Considered “dreadful” in the past , the painting turned out to be in tune with the newest trends of the movies of the ’70s. In the ’70s, cinematography extended its limits regarding the visualization of violence. Due to technological advancements, special effects in movies started to deliver extremely graphic imagery. On the screen, moviemakers exposed bloody guts and split brains while viewers watched, first in horror, and then with curiosity. The struggle of characters and the streaming blood within the claustrophobic darkness of Gentileschi’s tenebristic painting reminds viewers of the striking episodes of horror movies. The graphic decapitation and bloody sheets were somewhat comparable with the ultimate gruesomeness of such movie as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Hills Have Eyes,” or “Halloween.”
With this shift in popular culture toward repugnance as a form of entertainment, the painting “Judith Slaying Holofernes” could be seen as a curious and unique example of the horror movie as created by the baroque woman-artist.

Also, as the painting progressed from oblivion to notoriety and attained its symbolical feministic meaning, it became easy prey for postmodern artists. Kathleen Gilje painted “Self Portrait in the Kitchen after Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith and Holofernes” turning the Nebuchadnezzar’s general into a giant rooster as if illustrating the original Gentileschi’s implications and humorously proclaiming a man’s nature (fig.1). Emil Kazaz, in his phantasmagoric Judith #5 "Hung King,” presented Holofernes, in a symbolic narrative sequence, as a giant rat and a hanging lamb carcass, emphasizing once more the animalistic nature of Holofernes, therefore justifying his murder (fig.2). Sometimes, hybrids of cultural forms such as Hillary White, "Beaker Slaying Honeydew (fig.3) or Oliver Scott Snure’s “Holofernes Revenge” (fig.4) surfaced up in pop culture as homage or parody.

Even so, Gentileschi’s “Judith” has avoided the superficial comparisons and visual devaluation associated with mass reproduction as has happened to images of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Klimt’s The Kiss. The painting remains unexpected, visually provocative, and historically

intriguing.
The historical research of the period that exposed its cultural norms and the artist’s personal drama animates the hidden content and creative basis of the painting. Art scholars and historians are still debating if Artemisia Gentileschi was driven by pure personal drama, or if she was expressing broader feminist statements revolting against male domination in art. I think that the heat of this discussion comes out of the feeling of empathy in responsive connection with the artist’s vision through the abyss of time. Merging with the historical analysis, the careful review of the visual image qualities highlights Gentileschi’s distinctive aptitude, but also identifies the artist’s individual position towards pictorial concepts of the past, along with the influence of specific artists such as Caravaggio. The combination of historic and visual analysis connotes the modern significance of the painting.
The analysis of the artwork and its meaning would be impossible to complete without acknowledging the deep emotional experience integral to the perception of the painting. In the Uffizi, I was standing in front of the massive painting “Judith Slaying Holofernes” by Artemisia Gentileschi absorbed by feeling the pain, the effort, and the groan… I felt myself not as a spectator but almost as a witness and accomplice, unwittingly checking for splashes of blood on my clothes.