Judith carrying the head of Holofernes

Judith Carrying the Head of Holofernes, painted around 1635 during Artemisia's mature years, is one of her late treatments of the subject she made her own throughout her career. The Assyrian general's severed head, carried in a basket by Judith and her maidservant, has a gruesomeness that Artemisia never softened: the price of Bethuliah's salvation is graphic and real. Her ability to make female heroism both physically powerful and morally serious — to paint women acting with the same agency and consequence as the male heroes of biblical narrative — was her most radical artistic contribution. The technical mastery of her mature work, the quality of light and the authority of her figure composition, places her among the major painters of the seventeenth century.

The composition captures Judith with her trophy in dramatic torchlight. Gentileschi's bold palette and strong tenebristic contrasts create a scene of triumphant female power.