Caught in the act
Two artistic approaches to a blood-chilling tale
Poor Artemisia Gentileschi. Her big moment has been postponed because of COVID-19.
Gentileschi was a baroque artist born in Rome. Contemporary patrons and collectors loved her lifelike, dramatic paintings. She became one of the earliest members of the prestigious Florence Academy of the Arts of Drawing.
Her glory faded after her death. She was rediscovered in the 20th century. But an exhibition at the National Gallery in London was to be her introduction to a bigger audience. Due to open in April, it’s been delayed indefinitely.
When Gentileschi was rediscovered, her paintings of Judith killing Holofernes made people gasp.
Two reasons. One, the paintings depicted a woman cutting off a man’s head. Two, these dramatic works were executed by a woman — a woman who was a pioneer of the 17th-century baroque style.
Many artists, male and female, have tackled the Judith story since the 12th century. In Gentileschi’s day, Judith symbolized the Roman Catholic Church, while Holofernes stood for the Protestant reformers in Northern Europe.
The story of Judith originates in the Old Testament Apocrypha. Holofernes, an Assyrian general, is about to attack Bethulia, the town where Judith, an Israelite widow, lives. Judith resolves to save her people.
One evening, accompanied by Abra, her servant, Judith goes to Holofernes’s camp for dinner. He offers her wine, but she doesn’t drink. He does. When he is drunk, she severs his head with the sword Abra has brought. Judith takes the severed head back to Bethulia. The Israelites are saved.
One of Gentileschi’s Judith paintings, produced around 1615, was to travel from Italy for the London exhibition. Let’s compare it with one painted in 1596 by Fede Galizia, a Milanese painter. Both women focus on Judith and Abra moments after the decapitation.
Baroque artists like Gentileschi aim to create a sense of discomfort and unease at first sight. Judith and Abra, in front of her, dominate the composition. They stand close together, surrounded by an ambiguous and claustrophobic darkness.
Galizia works in an earlier Mannerist style, one that is slightly calmer and less dramatic. In Galicia’s version, we meet the two women separately. Judith takes centre stage, and then we eventually get to Abra on the far right.
Neither one of Gentileschi’s women responds to our gaze. Instead they look rightward and outside the painting. That pushes us out. Moreover, Abra’s back view is a traditional way of pushing viewers out. But we want back in. Pulling the viewer in only to push the viewer out is pure baroque. It keeps us on edge.
So does Abra’s white-sleeved left arm, positioned as an emphatic diagonal. It leads downward to her hand, which holds a
bloodied basket containing the severed head, lying on a bloodstained cloth. Above the head, Judith’s right hand grips the sword.
This grey-skinned head indicates the deed is done. Judith and Abra stand outside Holofernes’s tent. Both gaze anxiously into the darkness. Have they heard something? Will they get away safely?
Galizia’s Judith looks less vulnerable. She personifies strength and victory. In her lowered right hand she grasps a short curved sword, barely visible against the silvery fabric of her dress. Judith’s other hand hefts the head of Holofernes, dripping blood. Clutching it triumphantly by the hair, she places the head in a bowl held by Abra who, hand to chin, gazes thoughtfully at her mistress.
And Galizia adds a deep red curtain behind Judith. The colour of blood, it also stands for part of Holofernes’s tent. Unlike Gentileschi’s women, these two have not yet encountered the potentially dangerous darkness.
Gentileschi died in Naples in 1653. Galizia died in Milan in 1630 — during an epidemic of plague.
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator, YouTube video maker and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art. rahaggo@gmail.com