Jan Sanders van Hemessen portrayed the Jewish heroine Judith as a muscular nude to be both admired and feared. When the Assyrian army threatened Judith\u2019s people, the handsome widow saved them from slaughter by in\ufb01ltrating the tent of the enemy general, Holofernes, to win his con\ufb01dence and then behead him. Van Hemessen\u2019s life-size interpretation re\ufb02ects contemporary male ambivalence toward female agency. It celebrates Judith\u2019s physical and moral strength but also foregrounds the sexuality that enabled her triumph, reproducing for viewers the aggressive beauty that caused her adversary\u2019s demise. Judith was one of several religious and mythological \ufb01gures featured in works hailing the power of women, a recurrent theme in northern Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.<\/p>\n
Van Hemessen was one of the chief proponents of a style, popular in the Netherlands in the \ufb01rst half of the sixteenth century, that was deeply indebted to the monumental character of classical sculpture, as well as to the art of Michelangelo and Raphael. Judith\u2019s muscular body and her elaborate, twisting pose re\ufb02ect these in\ufb02uences. Van Hemessen combined an idealized form with precisely rendered textures, as in Holofernes\u2019s hair and beard and Judith\u2019s gauzy headdress and brocaded bag. The \ufb01gure\u2019s straining pose, the dramatic lighting, and the highly detailed surfaces all serve to heighten the tension of this composition.<\/p>\n","short_description":"According to the biblical story, the widow Judith saved her people from being slaughtered by the Assyrian army by infiltrating the tent of the enemy general, Holofernes. She then seduced and beheaded him. Jan van Hemessen's life-size interpretation reflects men's ambivalence toward female agency in 16th-century Netherlands. It celebrates Judith's physical and moral strength but also foregrounds the sexuality that enabled her triumph.","dimensions":"99.1 \u00d7 77.2 cm (39 \u00d7 30 3\/8 in.); Framed: 119.7 \u00d7 97.8 \u00d7 6.4 cm (47 1\/8 \u00d7 38 1\/2 \u00d7 2 1\/2 in.)","dimensions_detail":[{"depth":null,"width":77,"height":99,"diameter":null,"clarification":null},{"depth":6,"width":97,"height":119,"diameter":null,"clarification":"Framed"}],"medium_display":"Oil on panel","inscriptions":null,"credit_line":"Wirt D. Walker Fund","catalogue_display":null,"publication_history":"Robert Lebel, \u201cUne \u2018Judith\u2019 de Jan van Hemessen,\u201d Journal de l\u2019amateur d\u2019art 10, 101 (1956), p. 3 (ill.). \n\nHans Huth, \u201cA Mannerist Judith for the Art Institute,\u201d AIC Quarterly 51, 1 (1957), pp. 2 (ill.), 3. \n\nS.V., \u201cNuovi acquisti all\u2019Art Institute,\u201d Emporium 63 (1957), pp. 185\u201386 (ill.). \n\nHelen Comstock, \u201cA Flemish Mannerist Judith,\u201d Connoisseur 140 (1957), p. 139 (ill.). \n\nArt Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), pp. 214\u201315. \n\nGiorgio T. Faggin, La pittura ad Anversa nel Cinquecento (Florence, 1968), pl. 111. \n\nGert von der Osten and Horst Vey, Painting and Sculpture in Germany and the Netherlands, 1500 to 1600 (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 198, pl. 183. \n\nJohn Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (London, 1970), pp. 255 (ill.), 287. \n\nPaul Wescher, \u201cJan van Hemessen und Jan van Amstel,\u201d Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, n.s., 12 (1970), pp. 42\u201343, fig. 6. \n\nJan Bialostocki, \u201cLa gamba sinistra della Giuditta: Il quadro di Giorgione nella storia del tema,\u201d in Giorgione e l\u2019umanesimo veneziano, ed. Rodolfo Pallucchini (Florence, 1981), pp. 216\u201317; trans. and repr. in Jan Bialostocki, The Message of Images: Studies in the History of Art (Vienna, 1988), pp. 126, 261. \n\nBurr Wallen, Jan van Hemessen: An Antwerp Painter between Reform and Counter-Reform (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1983), pp. 2, 107\u201308, 309\u201310, no. 36, fig. 121. \n\nPeter C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America (Washington, D.C., and Grand Rapids, Mich., 1986), p. 49, fig. 65. \n\nArt Institute of Chicago, Master Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1988), p. 21 (ill.).\n\nRobert Genaille, review of Wallen, Jan van Hemessen: An Antwerp Painter between Reform and Counter-Reform, in Revue Belge d\u2019arch\u00e9ologie et d\u2019histoire de l\u2019art 58 (1989), p. 138. \n\nCorinna H\u00f6per, Katalog der Gem\u00e4lde des 14. bis 18. Jahrhunderts in der Kunsthalle Bremen (Bremen, 1990), pp. 167\u201368. \n\nGuy Bauman and Walter A. Liedtke, Flemish Paintings in America: A Survey of Early Netherlandish and Flemish Paintings in the Public Collections of North America (Antwerp, 1992), p. 339, no. 264 (ill.). \n\nBurr Wallen, \u201cJan Sanders van Hemessen,\u201d in The Dictionary of Art, vol. 14 (New York, 1996), p. 380, fig. 1. \n\nMargarita Stocker, Judith, Sexual Warrior: Women and Power in Western Culture (New Haven, 1998), pp. 18, 112, fig. 13. \n\nAndreas Kreul, Doppelg\u00e4nger: Repliken und \u201candere Originale\u201d zu Werken aus der Sammlung der Kunsthalle Bremen, exh. cat. (Kunsthalle Bremen, 1999), pp. 18\u201321, 29, 56 (ill.).\n\nJames Rondeau, ed., Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the collection (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2025), 28 (ill.).","exhibition_history":"Kansas City, MO, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Visiting Masterpiece: Jan Sanders van Hemessen, Judith, September 24, 2019-October 30, 2020.","provenance_text":"Marie Catherine d\u2019Onyn de Chastre (n\u00e9e Baronne de Herckenrode) (1731\u20131824); sold, Douari\u00e8re d\u2019Onyn de Chastre (n\u00e9e Baronne de Herckenrode), Leuven, Belgium, June 10, 1825, lot 129, to D\u00e9sir\u00e9 van den Schrieck (1785\u20131857), Leuven, Belgium. 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