Judith with the Head of Holofernes

This undated Judith with the Head of Holofernes, held at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, represents another treatment by Stanzione of the subject he returned to across his career. The story from the deuterocanonical Book of Judith — in which the widow Judith saves her besieged city by seducing and beheading the Assyrian general Holofernes — offered Baroque painters the irresistible combination of female heroism, sexual tension, and graphic violence. Stanzione's multiple treatments of the subject allow comparison between different approaches: variations in Judith's expression (triumphant, composed, unsettled), in the presentation of the severed head, and in the degree of narrative specificity versus timeless heroine-portrait. The Boston version joins the Metropolitan's treatment as evidence of sustained engagement with the subject over his career.

Stanzione's characteristic surface polish and luminous flesh tones give Judith a refined, almost otherworldly beauty that distances his interpretation from more visceral treatments of the subject. The composition is organized around the triangle of Judith's face, hand, and sword, with Holofernes's head forming the lower terminus of the narrative action. Warm, focused light enhances the figure's dramatic presence.