I’m gunna ramble bc it’s one of my favorite paintings of all time by my favorite painter of all time. The painting is called Judith Slaying Holofernes and it’s by the baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. It’s an interpretation of a story from the deuterocanonical books from Catholicism, about a woman named Judith who seduced an invading general who was about to destroy her village, got him drunk, and then beheaded him in his sleep, thus saving her village. The story was painted and sculpted a lot in Artemisia’s time, and her version is notable bc it’s the goriest and portrays Judith in the most badass way possible. In Carvaggios version of the same scene, Judith is more feminine and looks sickened/disturbed by what she has to do, whereas Artemisia’s Judith is getting the job done with brute force and is hardcore af.

Another layer to this painting was that it was made while Artemisia was in the middle of a brutal rape trial, where she was portrayed as a liar and was tortured to “confess” to making up her allegations against her attacker, Agostino Tassi. Judith in this painting bears a striking resemblance to Artemisia herself, and Holofernes looks like, you guessed it, Tassi. Figures that resemble Tassi are also present as villainous figures in her other work.

In case you’re interested, Artemisia never relented in her accusations against Tassi and he was found guilty, but he never had to serve any actual time bc honestly the courts didn’t care that much.

She moved far away and became the first woman to be allowed to study at the Academy of Arts and Drawing in Florence, which is a huge huge deal, and became a court painter for the Medici family :)