Spaightwood Galleries

This show was born in a discussion about a passage in Sir Philip Sidney's Old Arcadia (1579-80), in which the narrator describes the virtuous and virginal heroine as wearing a dress "so near nakedness that one might well discern part of her perfections, and yet so apparelled as did show that she kept the best store of her beauties to herself; her excellent fair hair drawn up into a net made only of itself (a net indeed to have caught the wildest disposition); her body covered in a light taffeta garment so cut as the wrought smock came through it in many places (enough to have made a very restrained imagination to have thought about what was under it)." One of the thoughts this passage inspired was that essentially women were a mystery to men—including artists: creatures able to tame the wildest and make wild the tamest, perhaps simultaneously! We began to wonder about the traditional disjunctive classification of women as either saints or sluts, a distinction reified in a 1990 show at The National Gallery of Art, Eva / Ave: Women in Renaissance and Baroque Prints by H. Diane Russell. In the passage quoted above from The Old Arcadia, it is not women but the imaginations of men that seem to be the issue. The same situation seems often the case in Renaissance prints and drawings as well. When we see a Susanna or a Bathsheba innocently bathing, a violated Lucrece, or a penitent Mary Magdalene, the mind registers one understanding of the scene even as the imagination is invited to create another. Thus was born a curiosity about the depictions of women in a wide variety of sixteenth and seventeenth-century prints and drawings presenting women in the contexts of biblical history, secular history, mythology, "real life," and life moralized.

The story of Judith and Holofernes can be found in apocryphal Book of Judith, which tells of the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Assyria. Having decided to wage war against the Medes, he calls for all the peoples of the West to aid him in his conquest and is enraged when they refuse. After he defeats the Medes, he vows a war of conquest and slaughter against all who refused to join him in his war and appoints his general, Holofernes, to lead an army against them so that they might learn that there is no god on earth but Nebuchadnezzar. The Jews resist and Holofernes starts a campaign to let thist and hunger drive them into submission. The people pray to the Lord for aid, but when he does not immediately act, they come to their ruler and demand that he surrender so that they don't have to watch their children die of thirst. Judith, a rich and beautiful widow from the town of Bethulia, invites the the elders to visit her. Rebuking them for trying to force God to act by their timetable, she promises to pray that God accept her as a means to destroy the Assyrian army. She takes off her widow's weeds of sackcloth, washes and annoints herself with oil, puts on her finest clothes, and she and her maid go to confront Holofernes, telling him that God has turned against the people and that she will go out behind the camp every night and pray that the Lord make her the means to let Holofernes know when to begin his battle. Amazed by her beauty and her wisdom, Holofernes invites her to his tent to eat with him, she agrees t come, but not to eat, lest it be an occasion of sin. Putting on her "festive garments and all her feminine adornments, she reclines in front of Holofernes, who is filled with desire at the sight of her: "The heart of Holofernes was in rapture over her and his spirit was shaken, He was burning with desire to possess her, for he had been biding his time to seduce her since the first day he saw her" (Judith 12: 15-17). She drinks a little, but he drinks "more than he had ever drunk on one single day in his life" and passes out on the bed. Taking his sword, she prays to God for strength and cuts off his head with his own sword. She and her servant load the head into the bag in which she had kept her food when she went out nightly to pray and departs. The next day the pople of Bethulia hand Holofernes' head upon the walls of the city and prepare for battle. The Assyrians rush to wake Holofernes, discover his headless body, and lament: "A single Hebrew woman has brought disgrace upon the house of King Nebuchadnezzar" and shows them Holofernes' headless body upon the ground. The Assyrian army is "seized with consternation," panics, and flees, while the Isrealites warriors overcome them (Judith 14:18-15:4). After victory is complete, Judith leads "all Israel in a song of thanksgiving (Judith 16:1-17), dedicates on an altar in Jerusalem as a votive offering to God, then retires to her estate where she lives until her death at the age of 105 years old."