''Judith and Holofernes'' is an oil on canvas painting by Italian artist

Mattia Preti Mattia Preti (24 February 1613 – 3 January 1699) was an Italian Baroque artist who worked in Italy and Malta. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Saint John. Life Born in the small town of Taverna in Calabria, Preti was called ''Il Cava ...

, datable to around 1653–1656. It is held at the

Museo di Capodimonte Museo di Capodimonte is an art museum located in the Palace of Capodimonte, a grand Bourbon palazzo in Naples, Italy. The museum is the prime repository of Neapolitan painting and decorative art, with several important works from other Italia ...

, in

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

.Nicola Spinosa, ''Mattia Preti. Tra Roma, Napoli e Malta'', Naples, Electa, 1999 (Italian), ISBN 978-8851001292

History

The canvas is mentioned for the first time in the last will of the Calabrian lawyer Domenico di Somma, dated of 1659, where another work by Preti, the ''St John the Baptist'' is also named. The legacy of di Somma passed to his collaborator and friend, also from Calabria, Antonino Laratta. Both of them were Preti lawyers during the controversy that the painter had a few years earlier against the priests of the Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, for a diatribe relating to fees due for the cycles of frescoes that Preti executed on the life of Saint Andrew. On the death of Laratta, in 1685, the painting, together with that of St. John the Baptist, passed to the Church of San Domenico Soriano in

, a central place for the life of the Calabrian community in the city. The two works, therefore, at the will of the new owner, who in any case complied with a previous request indicated in Somma's will, were placed along the two side walls of the chapel where the lawyer Domenico had been buried, the first on the right of the main altar. After the suppression of the religious order in 1806, the painting, together with that of St. John the Baptist and another, the first executed by Preti once he arrived in Naples, the ''St. Nicholas of Bari'' for the Gallo-Coscia Chapel, were taken and brought into the Bourbon collections of the Palazzo dei Regi Studi. However, unlike the San Nicola, which found a place in the Neapolitan museum from the beginning, the Judith canvas appears in inventory among those permanently exhibited only in 1870, as it was first confined to deposits and then, in 1839, affected by a restoration work on the support.

Description

The painting takes place in the dark interior of a tent, where the Assyrian general

Holofernes In the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, Holofernes ( grc, Ὀλοφέρνης; he, הולופרנס) was an invading Assyrian general known for having been beheaded by Judith, a Hebrew widow who entered his camp and beheaded him while he was ...

was sleeping, after being led to believe of the Jews eminent defeat by Judith. The characters seem particularly illuminated in the scene, in contrast with the darkness surrounding them. It depicts Judith after beheading the sleeping general, holding his head on her arms, with an apparently sorrowful look. Judith looks up as if convinced of having fulfilled God's will, while the beheaded and partially naked corpse of Holofernes lies on his bed, with his neck dripping blood. The

chiaroscuro Chiaroscuro ( , ; ), in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achi ...

of the painting is clearly inspired by

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of hi ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Judith and Holofernes (Preti) 1656 paintings Paintings by Mattia Preti Paintings in the Museo di Capodimonte Paintings depicting Judith Christian art about death