The Judith Story

As promised, I have a story related to the artwork that inspired this year's holiday card.  Goes back to Carbondale, in the early 90's.  I was teaching 2D foundations, a class that covers the basics of 2D- a little drawing, some color theory, etc.  Took it myself back in the 80's, and the way I taught was influenced by my undergraduate education.  So I would occasionally show some slides of relevant work, as I learned long ago that sometimes it is easier to show examples than to explain ideas.  Seems to have worked out over the years.  

Anyway, I was showing a slide of Gustav Klimt's Judith and Holofernes, perhaps as an example of rhythm in two dimensional art, and mentioned that it was based on the biblical story.  From the other side of the room I heard a voice say, "that's not in my bible."   The speaker was one of my students, a woman older than me, one of my C&T students.  (clothing and textiles, a major that purported to teach about clothing design, though I doubted that anyone who went to college in Carbondale ever was hired to design clothing)  Here she was telling me that the Judith story was not biblical.  I believed it was.  The story was very popular in visual art, and had inspired many artists over the centuries.  If you are not familiar with it, the Jewish people were under siege from Assyrians, and a Jewish woman named Judith (a name that implies a Jewish woman, a female form of Judah), went out and attracted the attention of Holofernes, a general in this siege.  She was invited to come to his tent one night, assisted with getting him drunk, and when he passed out, along with her loyal maid, cut his head off.  She quickly got back home, the headless general was discovered the next day, and the army decided to leave.  Victory for the Jewish people.  The story was the inspiration for many artworks over the years, such as the above oil from Artemesia Gentileschi, but also an even more bloody painting from Caravaggio, and also works from Titian, Raphael, Ribera, Reni, etc.  Especially popular during the Baroque, when action scenes and high drama were praised.  Plus, artists had the opportunity to paint attractive women and violent night time scenes, also popular during the Baroque.  Klimt's version is from the early 20th century, and is less bloody, though it does show a very scary looking Judith holding onto the severed head of Holofernes.  I was familiar with all these artworks.  So how did this student not know the story?

Time for some research.  Now this was back in the days before the internet, so I had to do this from actual books.  But I found the answer.  Toward the end of the 1st century AD, the Jewish authorities decided to bring their massive number of scriptures to some kind of order, and the Book of Judith was removed from their canon.  (there are some historical issues that have resulted in the questioning of its authenticity)  A few centuries later, St Jerome translated the entire Bible into Latin (known as the Vulgate), and knowing this was one of books removed from their canon by Jewish authorities, placed it in a separate section of his new bible, a section known as the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonicals.  This continued to be part of all Catholic bibles, usually found between the Old and New Testaments.  But it was still part of the Catholic bible, so in those countries that remained Catholic (such as Italy and Spain)  the story was well known to both artists and patrons. However, in the Protestant countries (mostly northern Europe), these books either declared as separate non-canonical stories, or were completely removed.  Those who are students of art history may know more about the Protestant reformation than I do.  This student of mine did not know the story, because it probably never appeared in the bible she knew.  So during our next class meeting I told her what I had learned. I feared that she might be offended, by my stating this was a religious story, but she was actually very happy- she learned that there was more bible she could read.   A lot of my college students had never read a book or been to the library, so I was happy, too.

Look up Gustav Klimt on the internet and you will see his version of this painting, probably the most popular work he has on the web.  My version, which substitutes Santa Claus for Judith, and simplifies the image some, can be found on this blog on Christmas day.  Because of my student, I'll never forget Klimt's version, even though the Baroque versions had more influence on my art to follow. In any case, I chose it for this year's card.