(jazzy piano)
Zucker: We're in the Uffizi in Florence looking at a
large Baroque painting by the artist Artemisia Gentileschi.
Harris: This is the painting that's most often reproduced
by Artemisia, the subject is Judith and Holofernes.
This is a biblical subject-
Zucker: Old testament.
Harris: It's the story of a heroic woman and of course,
that is always a handy thing when you're an art historian
and you're talking about a woman artist.
In fact, it's difficult often with women artists
not to read their biography into the paintings.
Let's just take a close look at the painting to start with.
Zucker: It is Baroque in almost every way.
We have this deep tenebrism, this painting in a dark manner.
This very shadowed background that creates
this very shallow space and then the brilliantly
highlighted figures in the foreground.
Harris: We are in the tent of
the Assyrian general Holofernes.
So the story is that Judith is a Jewish widow from the town
of Bethulia, which is under siege by the Assyrian army.
Holofernes is the general of that army.
Zucker: And the Jewish town is about to give up.
Harris: Judith hatches a plan to save Bethulia.
Zucker: She dresses herself up to catch the eye of
the Assyrian general and is able to move across enemy lines
because she's seen as betraying her own town.
This story is usually interpreted that she seduces
the general, but he gets drunk and falls asleep.
Then she takes his sword and beheads him.
That's the moment that we're seeing here.
Harris: She's accompanied by her maidservant.
Artemisia also painted the next moment of the story,
which is after the beheading, they take the head,
put it in a bag and bring it back to Bethulia
to show everyone in the town that they're now safe.
Zucker: The maid is pressing down on Holofernes
with all of her might and he seems to be fighting back
as best he can in his drunken, half-asleep state.
But Judith is at that moment severing his head and
blood spurts everywhere, this is tremendously violent.
Harris: She grasps the beard and the hair on his head
and holds his head down and with her right arm,
draws that sword through his neck.
You can feel the force that it took.
This is very different from Caravaggio's version of
the subject where Judith looks very dainty and as though
she doesn't really have the strength to behead Holofernes.
Zucker: Look at the contrast of scale.
Look at the size of Holofernes' fist against
the maidservant's face and just how powerful
he is versus the scale of the woman.
Harris: Well it takes two of them to conquer one of him.
Zucker: Notice the way that both of the women's arms are
fully extended, whereas Holofernes' arm breaks at the elbow.
His leg breaks at the knee so we have
the sense of dismemberment that is not only
at the head, but also at his other limbs.
The womens' arms diagonals pushing towards the center.
The general's legs functioning very much
to pair with the parallel forearms of Judith.
But all of those limbs bringing our attention down
to the severing, down to the violent act itself.
Harris: His body is radically foreshortened.
Something that is common in Baroque art.
With his head [verif clostas] and this blood
spurting up and down those white sheets.
The bloodiest, goriest part of this
painting is what's closest to us.
Zucker: And as you said, Judith holds his head down.
But what that does is dislocates it so that
it seems no longer connected to his body.
Harris: We have this dramatic contrast of light and dark
that we also see very oft in Baroque art.
Where we have areas of very bright illumination
right up against very dark areas of shadow.
Zucker: What that creates is a kind of vivid physicality.
Harris: And it looks to me like she's
rolled up her sleeves in order to do this.
The naturalism is so palpable here and of course,
that is the heart of Baroque art.
(jazzy piano)