Judith and her Maid with the Head of Holofernes

Author: Rosie Razzall

This drawing is one of three surviving copies of a lost composition that depicts the widow Judith and her maidservant with the head of the Assyrian general Holofernes. As described in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith (10:1-13:20), Judith saved the city of Bethulia from siege by murdering the general in his tent. Having been invited there to dine, she dressed in her finest clothes and pretended to respond to his romantic advances. Then, while he was passed out with drink, she beheaded him with his sword. The drawing depicts the moment (13:9-10) when ‘she came out and handed over the head of Holofernes to her maid, who put it into her food bag’. On discovering her deed, the Assyrians fled and Bethulia was restored to the Israelites.

Two other versions of the drawing are in Washington, D.C.^[1] and Chatsworth.^[2] There has been some debate over which of these drawings is the better version, with some favouring the Washington drawing,^[3] others the Rotterdam one,^[4] but more recent scholars preferring the Chatsworth sheet.^[5] All three have suffered damage, and the Rotterdam drawing is abraded in several areas. Despite its spots of foxing, the Chatsworth drawing indeed displays more subtle tonal shading in the faces and drapery, executed in a rich pink-purple wash, when compared to the tonally muted Washington and Rotterdam sheets. It is nevertheless assumed that none of the surviving drawings is autograph and that all three drawings were copied from one of Mantegna’s now-lost designs.

Mantegna experimented with the subject of Judith and Holofernes on numerous occasions in the 1490s, responding to the story’s potential for the depiction of dramatic female heroism. The only surviving autograph drawing of the subject by Mantegna, signed and dated 1491, is a much-celebrated sheet in Florence.^[6] Although in that sheet Judith is seen in profile and her maid in three-quarters view, there are several paintings which bear a closer resemblance to the Rotterdam-Washington-Chatsworth composition. The pair of figures is close but not identical to a grisaille painting in Montreal,^[7] where the subject is reversed and Judith grips the head in her left hand, rather than reaching across her body. Another grisaille in Dublin^[8] is also similar in the poses and clothing of the two women, but with Judith’s sword arm raised at the waist. Keith Christiansen also compares Judith’s pose, with her arm crossing her body, to a painting after Mantegna in Washington, D.C.^[9] In the Rotterdam-Washington-Chatsworth trio, close attention is paid to the clinging, intricate folds of the women’s clothing. Details such as Judith’s buttoned sleeve, the maid’s embroidered trousers and the tassels dangling from the sack, remind us of the narrative importance of fabric and clothing in the saga. The date of 1482 inscribed on the sword in the Chatsworth version is generally believed to have been mis-transcribed, though this might be confirmed by revealing the inscription obscured by a line of gouache in the same place on the Rotterdam drawing. Otherwise, the composition probably belongs to the same decade as the various other versions.^[10]

The depiction of the maidservant as a Black woman seems to have been the unique invention of Mantegna, since she is not described with any particular ethnicity in the Bible or other sources, only as an abra (‘female servant’ or ‘slave’).^[11] In the Rotterdam drawing, her African identity is emphasised using generalised othering devices such as her embroidered clothing, turban, and tasselled cloak, which contrast with Judith’s Grecian garments. Paul Kaplan has convincingly argued that Mantegna’s consistent interpretation of this figure as Black across several versions of the subject coincided with the increasing presence of Black enslaved people in Europe in the 1490s, notably at the court of Isabella d’Este (1474-1539), and may even have been intended to impress her.^[12] By choosing to depict the maid as Black, Mantegna also relied on existing visual tropes of the Black servant helping a white sitter, adding a familiar servile dimension to a story otherwise about the inversion of gendered power.

The maid’s Black identity was also recognised by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), who described the existence of a drawing of ‘Judith putting the head of Holofernes into the pocket of one of her black slaves’ in his famous Libro de’ Disegni.^[13] Scholars have generally identified this drawing as the one in the Uffizi, although the description of the materials used – chiaroscuro with white lead – do not closely match those of that sheet, and it has no traces of the typical Vasari-style mount.^[14] Kaplan has even proposed that the drawing owned by Vasari was the one copied in the Rotterdam-Washington-Chatsworth sheets.^[15] While this suggestion remains impossible to verify, the composition must have been well-known. As well as the three drawn copies, it was engraved^[16] by Girolamo Mocetto (c.1458-1531), when the maid was given sandals and a dress instead of trousers, and the figures a landscape setting.^[17] This print was the source for a bronze plaquette in Washington, D.C.^[18]