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Judith with the Head of Holofernes

The canvas is divided down the vertical center by a swooped red curtain. To the left, two women are walking away from the curtain with the younger woman holding a sword and the older woman holding a decapitated head in her skirt. Behind the curtain at the center of the canvas, a half-nude, decapitated man is partially visible.

The canvas is divided down the vertical center by a swooped red curtain. To the left, two women are walking away from the curtain with the younger woman holding a sword and the older woman holding a decapitated head in her skirt. Behind the curtain at the center of the canvas, a half-nude, decapitated man is partially visible.

Artist Antiveduto Gramatica (Italian, 1571–1626)
Title Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Una Judith di mano di Antiveduto con cornice (from 1627 inventory of Giacomo Bosio's collection))
Date Ca. 1625
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions Framed: 38 3/4 × 43 1/8 × 2 3/8 in. (98.4 × 109.5 × 6 cm)
Stretcher: 30 5/8 x 35 in. (77.8 x 88.9 cm)
Credit Line Museum purchase with funds from Robert and Sarah LeBien, the Elisabeth P. Myers Art Acquisition Fund, and the Estate of Herman B Wells via the Joseph Granville and Anna Bernice Wells Memorial Fund, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 2003.148

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About this Work

The apocryphal Book of Judith (composed 150 BCE or later), tells the story of a virtuous Jewish heroine who saves her city, Bethulia, after it is besieged by the Assyrian general Holofernes in the seventh century BCE. Judith uses her seductive powers to gain entry to Holofernes’s tent, where she plies him with wine and beheads him after he falls asleep. The story was very popular with Renaissance and Baroque patrons and artists, including Caravaggio, who painted an exceptionally bloody scene of the beheading. Antiveduto Gramatica downplayed the violence, instead showing Judith and her maid leaving Holofernes’s tent with his head discreetly hidden in the maid’s skirt.


Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

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"Judith with the Head of Holofernes | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2024. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=2003.148