Judith with the Head of Holofernes

The Old Testament heroine Judith succeeded through her courage and cunning in entering the tent of general Holofernes at his camp outside the city of Bethulia and in seducing and then beheading him, thus ending the military threat against her people. At the time Cranach painted this portrait of the heroine, he had been working as court painter to the elector of Saxony for almost twenty years. The tax records of the city of Wittenberg list him as its wealthiest citizen. All the known versions of the half-length portraits of Judith from Cranach’s largeworkshop were painted around the year 1530. This striking concentration was apparently related to the founding of the Schmalkaldic League: Judith became a symbol of armed Protestant resistance to Charles V and his Catholic armies. Given this connection with contemporary history, Judith’s character as a mankilling femme cruelle, emphasised in other paintings, becomes secondary. Nevertheless, Cranach’s Judith also shows a trace of eroticism. Her long, flowinghair, costly and fashionable clothing, low décolleté with gold jewellery and the delicate gestures of her hands create tension with the openly displayed head of the enemy general and the erect sword she demonstratively holds in her right hand. But this is only one side of the story, because on the other hand Cranach’s choice of colours results in a subtle unity: the deadly character of this Old Testament murder is depicted in a variety of carefully nuanced shades of red. The style of Cranach’s Wittenberg paintings – regardless of the subject – is unmistakable: his compositions are always two-dimensional without reference to the surrounding space and usually also have a decorative effect. © Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010