Die Auffindung des enthaupteten Holofernes

An officer lifts a sheet and finds his general's body without its head. Botticelli skipped the killing itself and painted the moment of horror that follows, on a panel barely larger than a book.

The story behind the painting

This small tempera panel, 31 by 24 cm, is an early work by Botticelli. Its pendant, The Return of Judith to Bethulia, hangs with it in the Uffizi. They tell the story from the book of Judith: the Assyrian general Holofernes besieged the city of Bethulia and cut off its water. Judith, a young, wise and pious widow, went to his camp, won his trust, and on the fourth evening, after a banquet, was left alone with him drunk on his bed. She cut off his head. Scholars agree it is by Botticelli but not on the date: Wikipedia gives about 1472, Wikidata 1470, and Sergio Bettini 1467-1468.

What to look for

The scene is inside the general's tent. His officers have just come in to wake him and report the attack. An armoured officer, strongly foreshortened, bends over the bed and lifts the sheet, discovering, as we do, the naked, bloodied, headless body. Lit by a soft light, the body is young, relaxed and without violent twists, more like deep sleep than violent death. Around it the faces move from dread to horror, from surprise to bewilderment, while two riders who have just arrived show nothing yet. Through the parted curtains a hilly landscape glows in early morning light.

Meaning and intent

Judith was usually shown either triumphant with the head, or, more rarely, in the act of killing. Botticelli avoided the violence and chose the episodes just before and after. The colours are limited to three: white for the horse and sheets, red for the blood and clothes, blue for the tent and a robe, giving a darker harmony than the pendant. The figures stand one behind another like an ancient relief. Ronald Lightbown noted an oddity: the head carried away in the pendant is middle-aged, with a white moustache, while this body is clearly that of a young man.

Legacy

The body is described as Botticelli's first nude painted from a live model, drawing on his study of Greek and Roman art and on Pollaiuolo. His training among goldsmiths shows in the care for form. Raffaello Borghini described the two little pictures: Ridolfo Sirigatti gave them to Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, to adorn a study. They later passed to Antonio de' Medici and the Casino Mediceo di San Marco, joined in a walnut frame as a diptych, and entered the Uffizi in 1632.