Judith Beheading Holofernes: When a Raped Woman Paints Her Revenge
Blood everywhere. Two women behead a man. Artemisia Gentileschi paints her rage after rape.
By Artedusa
••15 min read
Judith Beheading Holofernes: When a Raped Woman Paints Her Revenge
Blood everywhere. It spurts. It flows on white sheets. It splashes the arms of two women who hold the man down and slash his throat. Holofernes, Assyrian general, struggles, screams, grabs Judith's hair as she methodically beheads him, her arm muscles tensed by effort. Her servant Abra immobilizes the writhing body. The sword sinks into flesh. Blood gushes. It's violent. It's brutal. It's relentless.
Judith Beheading Holofernes, painted by Artemisia Gentileschi in 1620, isn't a pious painting. It's a murder. A cold, calculated assassination executed by two women on a man. And it's painted by a woman who, seven years earlier, was raped by her painting master. A woman who had to testify before a tribunal. A woman who was tortured to verify she was telling the truth. A woman who, after that, painted again and again scenes of women killing violent men.
This painting isn't just art. It's a scream. It's revenge. It's a woman reclaiming power with a brush and blood.
Artemisia Gentileschi is one of the rare women painters of Italian Baroque to have known celebrity during her lifetime. But her story is inseparable from the violence she suffered. And her paintings—particularly her multiple versions of Judith—are haunted by this violence. You can't look at Judith Beheading Holofernes without knowing what Artemisia lived through. The blood on canvas becomes autobiographical.
Rome, 1611: The Rape
Artemisia Gentileschi is seventeen. She lives in Rome with her father, Orazio Gentileschi, reputed Caravaggesque painter. Her mother died when she was twelve. She doesn't have the right to attend art academies—reserved for men. She learns painting with her father, in his workshop. She copies Caravaggio. She masters tenebrism, violent chiaroscuro, brutal realism.
Orazio hires a colleague painter, Agostino Tassi, to teach perspective to his daughter. Tassi is an established artist. He works with Orazio on important frescoes. He's a respectable man. In appearance.
In May 1611, Tassi rapes Artemisia in her father's house, in his absence. It's not a misunderstanding. It's violent rape, documented in the trial records that will follow. Artemisia will testify: he threw her on the bed. She screamed. She fought. She managed to scratch his face, tear out his hair. He raped her anyway. Then he promised her marriage to repair the offense.
The marriage never comes. Tassi continues to abuse Artemisia for months under pretext of future engagement. When Orazio discovers what's happening, he files charges. Not for the rape itself—rape isn't really a crime in the 17th century. He files charges for theft of virginity. Because a raped girl is damaged merchandise. Because she can no longer marry advantageously. It's a question of violated masculine property.
The trial lasts seven months. Artemisia must testify publicly. Describe the rape in detail. Before men. Judges. Clerks. Her father. She must publicly relive the trauma.
And to verify she's telling the truth, she's tortured. Ropes are driven around her fingers and progressively tightened until crushing the phalanges. It's the torture of sibille, used to compel recalcitrant witnesses. If she's lying, the pain will make her confess. If she's telling the truth, the pain will prove her sincerity.
While her fingers are crushed, Artemisia continues to accuse Tassi. She doesn't retract. She repeats: "It's true. It's true. It's true." They crush her hands—the hands she uses to paint—and she refuses to be silent.
Tassi is found guilty. Sentenced to five years exile or two years hard labor. He does neither. Influential friends intervene. He's released after a few months. He resumes his career as if nothing happened. He'll work for the pope. He'll die rich and respected.
Artemisia, she bears the scandal. She's the victim, but she's the one society condemns. A raped girl is a soiled girl. To rehabilitate her, her father hastily marries her to a mediocre painter, Pierantonio Stiattesi. The couple leaves for Florence. Artemisia leaves Rome behind. But she takes the trauma with her.
And she begins painting Judith.
Judith: The Biblical Heroine Who Beheads the Tyrant
Judith's story comes from the Book of Judith, apocryphal text of the Old Testament. Bethulia, Jewish city, is besieged by the Assyrian army led by General Holofernes. Famine threatens. Defeat is near. Judith, young virtuous widow, decides to act. She adorns herself in her most beautiful clothes, takes her servant Abra, and goes to the enemy camp. She seduces Holofernes with her beauty. He invites her to his tent. He drinks. He gets drunk. He falls asleep.
Judith seizes Holofernes's sword. She prays to God to give her strength. And she cuts off his head. Two blows. The first cuts in. The second severs. Abra puts the head in a sack. The two women return to Bethulia. The Assyrian army, discovering their general beheaded, flees. The city is saved.
Judith is a heroine. She saved her people through an act of strategic violence. She used her femininity as weapon—seduce to disarm—then she used a masculine weapon—the sword—to kill. It's an inversion of gendered roles. The passive woman becomes active. The victim becomes killer.
The Judith theme is popular in Renaissance and Baroque art. Dozens of painters treat it. But they treat it reassuringly. Judith is beautiful, calm, idealized. The murder is suggested, sanitized. Often, Judith is represented after the murder, holding Holofernes's severed head like a trophy. The violent act is already accomplished, off-screen, clean.
Not with Artemisia. With her, it's live murder. The precise instant when the sword slices flesh. Blood gushing. The man screaming. The women holding firm. Violence in full action, brutal, physical, real.
Naples, 1612-1620: Artemisia Paints and Repaints Judith
Artemisia paints her first version of Judith Beheading Holofernes around 1612-1613, one year after the rape and trial. She's nineteen. It's a commission. But it's also manifestly personal.
In this first version (today at Naples's Capodimonte Museum), everything is violence. Judith leans over Holofernes. She pulls her sword through his neck. Her arms are muscled, tensed by effort. It's not an easy task. Beheading someone requires strength. Artemisia doesn't sanitize it. Judith sweats. She grimaces. She kills with effort.
Abra, the servant, isn't a passive spectator. She's active accomplice. She holds Holofernes down. She presses. She helps. It's teamwork. Two women against one man.
Holofernes struggles. His arms grip the sheets. His hand seizes Judith's hair. He tries to push Abra away. He screams. Or rather, he tries to scream—his throat is already slit, blood gushes. His eyes are wide with terror. He knows he'll die. He feels the blade in his flesh. He's powerless.
Blood is everywhere. On white sheets. On Judith's arms. On Holofernes's body. Artemisia paints it with chilling realism. It's not symbolic blood. It's real blood. Thick. Red. That flows, splashes, stains.
The composition is Caravaggesque. Black background. Violent light striking bodies. Drama concentrated on characters. No decor. No context. Just three people, a sword, blood.
But there's something specifically feminine in this painting not found in male painters. Judith isn't idealized. She's not beautiful in the act of killing. She's focused. Determined. Efficient. Her face expresses resolution, not seduction. She doesn't enjoy the violence. She accomplishes it. It's work she must do. She does it.
Artemisia repaints Judith several times during her career. A second version around 1620 (today at the Uffizi in Florence). A third. Perhaps others, lost. Each time, it's the same scene. The murder in act. Blood gushing. Women holding firm.
Why repaint the same scene again and again? Perhaps because it's therapeutic. Perhaps because it's the only possible revenge. Artemisia can't kill Tassi. Justice freed him. Society rehabilitated him. But she can paint men killed by women. Again and again. She can invert roles. She can give power to victims.
The Comparison: Artemisia vs. Men
Almost all Baroque painters paint Judith. Let's compare.
Caravaggio (1599): Judith is beautiful, calm, almost disgusted. She holds the sword delicately, like a dirty object. She looks away. She doesn't want to see what she's doing. Abra is a passive old woman watching. Holofernes dies cleanly, in his bed, eyes closed, almost peaceful. It's a contained scene. Elegant. Distant.
Cristofano Allori (1613): Judith is an ideal beauty. She carries Holofernes's severed head like an accessory. She poses. She looks at the viewer. It's a femme fatale portrait disguised as biblical scene. The painter used his mistress as model for Judith and painted himself as Holofernes. It's narcissistic. Seductive. Not really violent.
The difference is striking. Men paint Judith as erotic object. Beautiful and dangerous woman. Femme fatale. Masculine fantasy of the seductive castrator.
Artemisia paints Judith as acting subject. Woman reclaiming power. Woman refusing passivity. Woman killing to save. To save herself.
It was long said that Artemisia painted Tassi as Holofernes and herself as Judith. It's too simple a reading. Too literal. Artemisia wasn't Judith. Judith killed her rapist. Artemisia couldn't. Tassi died peacefully in his bed decades later.
But the painting allows symbolic revenge. It allows reclaiming the narrative. In rape, Artemisia was the passive object of masculine violence. In the painting, she directs violence. She controls the scene. She decides who lives, who dies, how blood flows. It's power real life denies her. Painting gives it to her.
Florence, 1616-1620: The First Woman Accepted to the Academy
Despite the Roman scandal, Artemisia succeeds. In Florence, she becomes the first woman admitted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. It's an immense honor. She's twenty-three. She's recognized as talented painter, not as feminine curiosity.
She paints for the Medicis. For nobles. For the Church. She earns her living. She supports her husband who, ironically, is a failed painter. She has four children. Only one survives—Prudenzia, who will also become a painter.
Artemisia corresponds with Galileo. With intellectuals. She's integrated into cultivated Florentine circles. But she remains "the woman painter." The exception. The oddity.
Because in the 17th century, women can't be professional painters. They don't have access to academies. They can't study anatomy—seeing naked male bodies would be scandalous. They can't have workshops with apprentices. They can't sign contracts without masculine guardianship.
Artemisia defies all this. She has a workshop. She trains apprentices. She signs her contracts. She fights to be paid as much as her male colleagues—and often fails, but continues fighting.
In her letters, she writes: "I will show Your Excellency what a woman can do." It's a permanent challenge. Prove. Again and again. That she's not an anomaly. That she's an artist. Period.
The Other Judiths: Feminine Violence and Vengeance
Artemisia doesn't only paint Judith. She paints other violent women. Other feminine vengeances.
Jael and Sisera: Jael, another biblical heroine, drives a stake through the temple of enemy general Sisera asleep in her tent. Artemisia paints her focused, efficient, brutal.
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist: Salome holds the prophet's severed head. Not as triumphant seductress. As cold executioner.
Susanna and the Elders: Susanna, virtuous woman spied on by two lustful old men who threaten her with rape or slander. Artemisia paints Susanna terrified, disgusted, pushing away the old men's hands touching her. Other painters paint Susanna as erotic object offered to voyeuristic gaze. Artemisia paints harassment. Fear. Disgust.
Each time, the feminine point of view. Empathy for the victim. Or power given to the avenger.
It's revolutionary. Not because Artemisia paints women—all painters paint women. But because she paints them as subjects, not objects. They act. They decide. They kill or resist. They're not there to be looked at. They're there to act.
Oblivion and Rediscovery
Artemisia Gentileschi dies in Naples in 1656, probably from plague. She's sixty-three. She lived and worked in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, London. She painted for popes, kings, nobles. She was famous.
Then she was forgotten.
For three centuries, Artemisia disappears from art history. Her paintings are sometimes attributed to her father Orazio. Or to other male painters. Because a woman couldn't have painted that. Too good. Too powerful. Too violent.
Only in the 20th century, with second-wave feminism in the 1970s, is Artemisia rediscovered. Feminist art historians find her paintings. They reconstruct her biography. They read the 1612 trial records.
And Artemisia becomes a feminist icon. The woman artist who survived rape. Who testified. Who was tortured. Who continued painting. Who painted her revenge. Who succeeded despite everything.
But this feminist reading poses problems. It reduces Artemisia to her trauma. It reads all her paintings as post-traumatic therapy. It makes her a victim who paints to survive, not an artist who paints because she's brilliant.
Artemisia was an extraordinary artist. Period. Rape is part of her biography. But she's not only that. She's a master of Caravaggesque chiaroscuro. A brilliant colorist. A bold composer. A powerful visual storyteller.
Her Judiths aren't only personal revenge. They're Baroque masterpieces. Studies of movement, light, dramatic tension. They deserve to be admired for their pictorial excellence, not only for their symbolic charge.
But obviously, you can't separate art from context. You can't look at Judith without thinking of rape. And perhaps you shouldn't. Perhaps the painting's strength comes precisely from this fusion between technical mastery and existential urgency. Artemisia paints well because she's talented. And she paints this because she needs to paint it.
What Judith Still Cuts
Three hundred eighty years after Artemisia's rape, women are still raped. Victims still testify. They're still tortured—not physically, but psychologically, through media, socially. They're still judged. Their word is still doubted.
The 1612 Tassi trial eerily resembles contemporary trials. The accused must prove she struggled. That she said no. That she didn't provoke. That she didn't lie. The rapist, he benefits from doubt. From protection. From clemency.
Artemisia was tortured to prove she was telling the truth. Today, we no longer torture physically. But we publicly humiliate. We expose private life. We seek contradiction. We destroy credibility. It's another form of torture.
And after the trial, the victim bears the weight. Not the rapist. Tassi continued his career. Artemisia had to flee Rome.
But Artemisia also continued. She painted. She succeeded. She had a long and prolific career. She didn't let trauma destroy her. She transformed it. Into art. Into power. Into symbolic revenge.
Judith Beheading Holofernes says: we're not only victims. We can reclaim power. We can cut. We can symbolically kill what destroyed us.
The blood on canvas isn't real. But the rage is. The determination is. The refusal of passivity is.
Artemisia holds the sword. She cuts. She doesn't let go.
Four hundred years later, we look at this painting, and we understand.
Revenge doesn't always come in real life. Sometimes it comes on canvas. With red pigment resembling blood. With a woman holding a sword and refusing to lower her eyes.
Judith kills Holofernes. Again and again. Each time we look at the painting.
Artemisia won.
Judith Beheading Holofernes: When a Raped Woman Paints Her Revenge | Art History
