Judith with the Head of Holofernes

1605 · Berkeley Art Museum, University of California

mythological

Cavaliere d'Arpino's (Giulio Cesari's) Judith with the Head of Holofernes symbolically alludes to the violent decapitation of the Assyrian general without showing the gruesome moment that both Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi chose to depict. Instead a beautiful, almost demure, Judith raises Holofernes' head by his locks as her maidservant Abra looks on in puzzled reverence. Cavaliere d'Arpino's Judith is the embodiment of female virtue and moral perfection, an ideal heroine who has redeemed her people.

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About the Artist

Giuseppe Cesari

1568 – 1640

Italian Mannerist painter, also known as Cavaliere d'Arpino, active mainly in Rome. He had an enormous reputation in the first two decades of the 17th century, when he gained some of the most prestigious commissions of the day, most notably the designing of the mosaics for the dome of St Peter's (1603-12). Although some of his early work is vigorous and colourful, his output is generally repetious and vacuous, untouched by the innovations of Caravaggio (who was briefly his assistant) or the Carracci. He was primarily a fresco painter, but he also did numerous cabinet pictures of religious or mythological scenes in a finicky Flemish manner.

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