Rembrandt van Rijn - Judith at the Banquet of Holofernes. Artemisia 1634
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Judith at the Banquet of Holofernes. Artemisia 1634
142x152cm oil/canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Museo del Prado, Madrid:
The scene is part of a small group of allegories personified by heroic women -goddesses or heroines of Antiquity and the Old Testament painted by Rembrandt between 1633 and 1635, which reflect his confrontation with Rubens and the Flemish Baroque masters. They are all based on the same female model, traditionally considered a portrait of Rembrandt`s wife Saskia van Uylenburgh. However, following the compilation of the Corpus (1986), various authors now agree that the modelling of the face, based on marked contrasts of light and shadow with no attention to detail, indicates that this is not a portrait but a prototype. Indeed, this female type -clearly rooted in Rubens- is found in other scenes painted during these years not only by Rembrandt, but also by Jan Lievens (1607-1674) and Salomon de Bray (1597-1664).