Judith

Jan Sanders van Hemessen portrayed the Jewish heroine Judith as a muscular nude to be both admired and feared. When the Assyrian army threatened Judith’s people, the handsome widow saved them from slaughter by infiltrating the tent of the enemy general, Holofernes, to win his confidence and then behead him. Van Hemessen’s life-size interpretation reflects contemporary male ambivalence toward female agency. It celebrates Judith’s physical and moral strength but also foregrounds the sexuality that enabled her triumph, reproducing for viewers the aggressive beauty that caused her adversary’s demise. Judith was one of several religious and mythological figures featured in works hailing the power of women, a recurrent theme in northern Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Van Hemessen was one of the chief proponents of a style, popular in the Netherlands in the first half of the sixteenth century, that was deeply indebted to the monumental character of classical sculpture, as well as to the art of Michelangelo and Raphael. Judith’s muscular body and her elaborate, twisting pose reflect these influences. Van Hemessen combined an idealized form with precisely rendered textures, as in Holofernes’s hair and beard and Judith’s gauzy headdress and brocaded bag. The figure’s straining pose, the dramatic lighting, and the highly detailed surfaces all serve to heighten the tension of this composition.