
Judith Holding up the Head of Holofernes
Carlo Maratti
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Like the study for Jael Slaying Sisera - Metropolitan Museum of Art inv. 36.101.2 - , this sheet relates to the mosaics of biblical subjects that Maratti designed for Saint Peter's Basilica in the later 1670s. The subject is another Old Testament heroine, Judith, who vanquished the Assyrian general Holofernes, an enemy of the Jews, by seducing him and cutting off his head after he had fallen into an inebriated stupor. Gazing heavenward, Judith here brandishes her sword and triumphantly holds up her victim's severed head. Behind her is the slumped, decapitated corpse of Holofernes. For this composition study, Maratti employed pen and ink whereas for the figure study of Jael he used red chalk-a medium that allows for more subtle and descriptive modeling.
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.