Baroque

The piece of art that I choice to look at was the “beheading of Holofernas” by Artemisia Gentileschi. This painting was one that I was unable to stop thinking about for a long time. I feel that there is so much going on in this painting that you could interpret it for days if not weeks. There are many different versions of this painting but this is actually my favorite out of any that I have seen. I think that this painting has a lot to do with religion which ties into the Council of Trent. Judith was the one beheading Holofernas and I feel as though she was looked at in many different ways. One of the articles that I found (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_beheading_Holofernes) says that around 1600 is when Judith began to take on a more violent character. Judith was becoming more and more of a evil woman which I believe was something that was standing out against the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent had a focus on the Church being the number one and the only interpreter of Scripture and I feel that by having so many different versions of this painting it is going against this by having many different people interpret the same thing and none of these were interpreted by the church. 

This is a different version of the same painting. This one is by Caravaggio. Some things that I noticed about this one after reading the article http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/his/CoreArt/art/bar_cvggo_judith.html

was that Holofernes may not be completely dead in this picture, his hand is gripping the bed showing that although he may not fully be aware there is still some life left within him. The article has some really cool information so if you are interested in the painting I would highly suggest checking this out.