Judith’s Song

Commenting on Artemisia Gentileschi’s paintings of the biblical hero Judith, the French literary critic Roland Barthes (1979) identified her story ‘[a]s a strong narrative’ which has ‘exploded over the centuries, into every possible form’ in the arts. In the Douay–Rheims 1899 translation (DRA), the extraordinary elements of this story coalesce into the phrase ‘delivered him into the hands of a woman’ (16:7). Our normative understandings of power and male/female relationships are turned upside down as the lesser physical stature of a woman destroys male potency.

Donatello’s sculptural visualization of 16:8–13 emphasizes Judith’s act of beheading Holofernes, the enemy of her people—her sword raised in her right hand. But a host of other key elements of this story are also incorporated by the artist, from Judith’s ‘garments of joy’ down to the sandal which ‘ravished’ (Greek: hērpasen) Holofernes’s eyes (16:9, 11 DRA). These sandalled feet crush the Assyrian general’s right hand and genitals, completing her conquest.

The Classical motif of victory—of the male champion standing atop the vanquished—seems inverted as female frailty conquers male authority. Yet, both the calm composure of her facial expression and her earlier (and ensuing) acts of piety and consecration (chapters 9 and 16) confirm that even as she is presented in the moment of her most defining physical action, Judith is a model of faith in God. Hers is not an act of personal retribution or bloodthirsty aggression, as she is the vehicle through which God saved the city of Bethulia at the cost of only one life.

Like other biblical heroes, Judith and her story are read, re-read, and re-envisioned by both artists and theologians throughout the millennia of Jewish and Christian history. Although Donatello’s statue was originally commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici for his family palace in Florence it was later removed to the Piazza in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (the City Hall) after the expulsion of the Medici and the new rule of the Florentine Republic under the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola.

In this ‘translation’, Donatello’s Judith became something more than what she was before (whether an expression of Renaissance theology or an example of artistic vision). She became an emblem of a people’s resistance to tyranny. Like David in the face of Goliath, she embodied the triumph of the underdog—a patriotic moment in Florentine society that gave birth to dramatic visions of Florence as a New Jerusalem. 

References

Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. 2010. ‘Costuming Judith in Italian Art of the Sixteenth Century’, in The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies Across the Disciplines, ed. by Kevin R. Brine, Elen Ciletti, and Henrike Lähnemann (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers), pp. 325–44

Barthes, Roland, et al. 1979. Word for Word—Artemisia No. 02, Trilingual edition (English/French/Italian) (Paris: Yvon Lambert)

McHam, Sarah Blake. 2010. ‘Donatello’s Judith as the Emblem of God’s Chosen People’, in The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies Across the Disciplines, ed. by Kevin R. Brine, Elen Ciletti, and Henrike Lähnemann (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers), pp. 307–24

The climactic episode of Judith’s narrative was the moment of her triumphal display of the decapitated head of Holofernes to the people of her besieged city, Bethulia. The seventeenth-century Bolognese painter Elisabetta Sirani selected this unusual passage enhanced with a series of Classical and biblical symbols to heighten the significance of this singular woman and her role in later Christian tradition as a Marian foretype.

Judith reveals her trophy in a dramatic night scene as two young acolytes carrying torches—one lit and one apparently just extinguished—seek to supplement the light from a white crescent moon in the upper left corner.

Dressed in the manner of the elegant ladies of seventeenth-century Bologna, Judith stands in the crepuscular light drawing attention to the left side of her body, including the raised hem of her garment revealing her ravishing sandals (Judith 16:9). A Classical symbol for the chaste and virtuous Greek goddess Artemis, the crescent moon subsequently became fundamental to the iconography of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Judith’s monumental scale and dignified bearing are also reminiscent of Athena, another ancient Greek virgin goddess (of wisdom and war). She too was adopted by Christians as a foretype of Mary. The elegant gold brooch on Judith’s breast is decorated with the head of the dreaded Medusa, the gorgon of Greek mythology. The Greek hero Perseus gave Medusa’s decapitated head to Athena who incorporated it onto Aegis, her shield, to strengthen her invincibility in battle. Mary was often identified as the defender of cities, churches, and monasteries, and thereby—like Judith and Athena—was imagined as a female warrior. Sirani’s emphasis on Judith’s dignity and monumentality further connects her to the symbolism of Mary as Mater Ecclesia.

By emphasizing Judith’s triumphant return to Bethulia, Sirani eliminates any deliberation of wanton sexuality or physical violence. Judith and her action are representative of the valour and virtue normally associated with a male hero. Hers are the powerful hands of a woman who has saved her people while maintaining her integrity.

References

Bohn, Babette. 2002. ‘The Antique Heroines of Elisabetta Sirani’, Renaissance Studies 16.1: 52–79

Harris, Ann Sutherland. 2010. ‘Artemisia Gentileschi and Elisabetta Sirani: Rivals or Strangers?’, Women’s Art Journal 31.1: 3–12

While the episode of the beheading of Holofernes might define the story of Judith, Giorgione transformed her from a pious widow and patriotic hero into a vision of female sexuality. Nonetheless he remained constant to the biblical narrative—a narrative that biblical interpreters and feminist scholars have argued is layered with eroticism and the scriptural idea of retribution for sexual violation. (Given the predilection for sex and violence in many scriptural texts, it is no wonder that filmmakers and performance artists have so favoured the Bible as a sourcebook.)

Giorgione’s female hero stands alone as she performs her deadly mission within a vertical composition that emphasizes the unusual relationship between her feminine form and the upright sword paralleling her body. In a traditional biblical format, Judith stands between the garden and the desert—a division emphasized by both the deep rose silken mantle that plummets in elaborate folds down her right side and her paler pink silk underdress with a high slit that reveals her left leg.

Her left foot is exposed and naked; her right leg and foot is hidden from view.

While her left foot rests on the decapitated head of Holofernes, the viewer’s eye is captured by the exposed leg. While not unknown in depictions of Classical female figures, this new visual element signified both sexuality and rape as we see in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) versions of Judith 9. Judith in her prayer in 9:2 recalls the rape of Dinah, the sister of Judith’s ancestor Simeon (Genesis 34), as well as the punishments visited on the offending Canaanites in retribution (‘thou gavest their wives for a prey’ 9:4 RSV).

The oversized sword displayed by Judith both echoes and reverses the violence perpetrated by powerful men on frailer women. It is a clear reminder that injustices perpetrated by the powerful are not simply issues of the contemporary ‘#MeToo’ Movement but one that is as old as the Bible. Victims of assault might find solace or a role model of spiritual strength and female courage in the image of Judith.

References

Anderson, Jaynie. 1997. Giorgione: The Painter of ‘Poetic Brevity’: Including catalogue raisonné (Paris: Flammarion), see especially Chapter 5, ‘Giorgione’s Imagery of Women’

Białostocki, Jan. 1988. ‘Judith: Story, Image, and Symbol. Giorgione’s Painting in the Evolution of the Theme’, in The Message of Images: Studies in the History of Art, Bibliotheca Artibus et Historiae (Vienna: IRSA), pp. 113–31