Barthel Beham
German, 1502-1540
Judith
INV-7900
Barthel Beham
German, 1502-15401525
engravingprint
Date
1525
Medium
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate/sheet: 5.4 × 3.6 cm (2 3/16 × 1 7/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer
The stalwart heroine of the Book of Judith from the Hebrew Apocrypha, the beautiful widow Judith seduced and beheaded the Assyrian general Holofernes, whose forces had besieged her city, in order to save her people. Depicted here in the nude, she sits triumphantly on Holofernes’s corpse, with a firm grip on her sword and the disembodied head. Judith was the rare female leader to be celebrated as such during this period.
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