Apocryphal Book Of Judith Analysis

A very popular theme among great artists and storytellers is a story from the Apocryphal book of Judith. In this story, a beautiful and loyal widow saves the Israelite town of Bethulia from Nebuchadnezzar 's army, who are under the command of Holofernes. While modeling her finest clothes, she pretends to destroy the invading Assyrian army. She is then taken to Holofernes, where she flatters and captivates him by her beauty and oath to help him overcome the Israeli resistance. After this meeting, she accepts Holofernes invitation to live with him. One evening, after some late night entertainment at a banquet, Holofernes lies in a drunken daze. Judith saw that this was a prime opportunity to complete her premeditated plan and slay this man to prevent him from controlling her people. Judith then takes his own sword and slices his head off. She calls her maid and they stuff the head into a bag and escape back to the town of Bethulia. Many great Renaissance and Baroque artists have chosen to illustrate this biblical narrative in one of two possible scenarios, with or without the servant, the decapitation, with Holofernes disposed on the bed, or of the heroine holding or carrying the head of Holofernes, often assisted by her maid. The Renaissance, is the time period following the Middle Ages. At the time, Europe saw a great revival of interest in the classical learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome. The style of painting, sculpture and decorative arts identified with the Renaissance began in Italy in the late 14th century and ended in the early 1600’s. At this time, Italians rediscovered the literature, philosophy, art, and architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans and began to see antiquity as the ‘golden age’ which held the answers to reinvigorating their society. Humanists celebrated the mind, beauty, power, and enormous potential of human beings. They believed that people were able to experience God directly and should have a personal, emotional relationship to their faith. Many works of Renaissance art depicted religious images, featuring subjects such as the Virgin Mary, or also known as the Madonna, and were touched by audiences of the period in the use of religious rituals. Today, they are instead seen as great works of art to scholars, students, art historians, and many others. Following the Renaissance, is the Baroque. The word derives from the Portuguese 'barroco ' meaning, 'irregular pearl or stone '. The Baroque period is often known for it’s artistic style that uses exaggerated motion, creating drama, tension, and energy in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, and even with music. The style began around the 1600’s in Italy, and spread to most of Europe. Baroque painting techniques were contrastive to Renaissance painting, in some ways. Renaissance painters were obsessed with form and figure, Baroque painters were obsessed with light. It was not just the figures that needed to be realistic, but also their …show more content…
Early Renaissance depictions of Judith tend to show her as fully dressed and desexualized. For Example, the Judith seen in Sandro Botticelli 's The Return of Judith to Bethulia, and with Michelangelo with a small depiction inside the Sistine chapel in the Vatican city. Later Renaissance artists, notably Lucas Cranach the Elder, who painted at least eight Judith 's, ended up portraying a more sexualized Judith, as a "seducer-assassin" or