Judith

Van Hemessen was one of the chief proponents of a style, popular in the Netherlands in the first half of the sixteenth century, that was deeply indebted to the monumental character of classical sculpture, as well as to the art of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raphael. Judith’s muscular body and her elaborate, twisting pose reflect these influences. Yet the use of the aggressive nude figure here also suggests a certain ambivalence on the part of the artist and his audience toward the seductive wiles Judith may have employed to disarm Holofernes. In this work, Van Hemessen combined an idealized form with precisely rendered textures, as in the hair and beard of Holofernes and Judith’s gauzy headdress and brocaded bag. The interplay between the straining pose of the figure, the dramatic lighting, and the fastidiously recorded surfaces serves to heighten the tension of this composition.