Jacopo Amigoni
Jael and Sisera, c.1739, Oil on canvas, 140 x 142 cm, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice; Cl. I n. 1259, ©️ Tate, London / Art Resource, NY
The Female of the Species
Commentary by Lauren Beversluis
The story of Jael killing Sisera is striking in its casual brutality. In Jacopo Amigoni’s representation of this moment, the artist creates a sharp contrast between the almost graceful movement and subdued tones of the painting and its violent, gruesome subject-matter.
Jael, who is described as ‘of tent-dwelling women most blessed’, is deceivingly generous and sweet, offering refuge and milk and curds to the general Sisera until he falls asleep, at which point she abruptly hammers a tent peg into his temple (Judges 5:26).
Jael’s expression in the painting is mild, almost tender, and her bearing is matronly and soft. Yet her figure is also broad and muscular, and a certain strength underlies her gentle exterior. Confidently swinging her ‘workman’s mallet’, she looms over the heedless and prostrate Sisera, whom she nearly equals in size (Judges 5:26).
The postures of the two protagonists are both continuous and contrasting. Their shoulders together create a diagonal line from the upper left to the bottom right corner of the painting. But in contrast to Jael, Sisera faces downwards, his expression largely hidden from the viewer, and his arms are defensively arranged, as if offering a single feeble struggle before going limp. His temple already bleeding, Jael does not hesitate, but happily takes aim with her second strike.
The story of Judges 4 and 5 plays with traditional gender roles throughout, and Jael engages in a ‘masculine’ activity: pounding a hammer and nail. By driving a peg into the general Sisera’s temple, the housewife Jael dramatically reverses the usual direction of sexual violence. The inversion of rape of women by men—a penetration now from female to male, and a fatal one—achieves retribution for it, and the conquest parallels and secures Israel’s conquest over her oppressors.
Deborah had prophesied that Sisera would be defeated at the hands of a woman (Judges 4:9). Narratively, this is the perfect poetic justice for all those who find themselves relentlessly subjugated by the strongman. But the Song of Deborah is not simply a story of righteous but cornered females conquering tyrannical males. Barak, Deborah’s general, lacks both confidence and ferocity in comparison with her, as Deborah’s pitiless and vindictive words in relation to Sisera’s hopeful mother reveal (Judges 5:28–31).
The Song of Deborah—and Amigoni’s interpretation of it—both seem to agree that, in such circumstances, ‘the female of the species is more deadly than the male’ (Kipling 1911: 379–80)!
References
Kipling, Rudyard. 2001. ‘The Female of the Species (1911)’, in The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions), pp. 379–80
