Judith with the Head of Holofernes

Author: Surya Stemerding

This drawing is a preliminary study for a fresco in Villa Aldobrandini, also known as Belvedere, in Frascati near Rome. The mural was painted between July 1602 and January 1603 as part of a cycle commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (1571-1621). The cycle was in fact a catalogue of so-called ‘women’s wiles’ with a series of scenes of virtuous women from the Old Testament whose courage and intelligence enabled them to triumph over sinful and powerful men.^[1] The fresco depicting Judith with the head of Holofernes, one of them, was made famous in an ode by the poet Giambattista Marino (1569-1625),^[2] and was described at length by the churchman and art theorist Giovanni Battista Agucchi (1570-1632).^[3]

The fresco differs very little from the drawing. In the definitive design Cesari replaced Judith’s billowing cape with a long, fluttering tresses of hair that reinforces the suggestion of movement (fig.). Her gown is not translucent, and the head of the dead Holofernes is not held by Judith herself but by her maidservant. Judith’s left arm is moved back in front of her body, while her hand (now empty) is pointing at the bloodied sword tilted up to the horizontal in her right hand. These modifications shift the focus in the fresco from the sword and severed head to Judith herself. That, though, weakens the dynamism of the drawing.

The execution of the sheet is typically Arpinesque. As he did in so many of his drawings, he combined red and black chalk, using the former for the heads and limbs.