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Judith
Barthel Beham1525
- Attribution
- Barthel Beham German, 1502-1540
- Medium
- Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
- Physical dimensions
- Image/plate/sheet: 5.4 × 3.6 cm (2 3/16 × 1 7/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer
CATALOGUE RECORD
Museum metadata is available under CC0. Image availability and rights are separate; consult the source record.
Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
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.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0