(Antwerp active circa 1570)
Judith and Holofernes: An Allegory of ‘Weibermacht’,
oil on panel, 96 x 125 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Brussels;
where bought by the present owner

The present painting, showing Judith and her maid before the elders of Bethulia, was executed in Antwerp circa 1560/70. It was once attributed to the Antwerp Mannerist Maerten de Vos (1531/32–1603), a versatile and prolific painter who returned from an eight-year trip to Italy with a style and sense of colour that was indebted to Veronese, Tintoretto, and Michelangelo. De Vos became one of Antwerp’s leading history painters. He profited from the flurry of ecclesiastic and noble commissions that followed the destruction wrought by the iconoclastic rage known as the Beeldenstorm in 1556. Although several experts still believe the present work could be by the young Maerten de Vos, the late Carl van de Velde of the Rubenianum, Antwerp, suggested the present painting belongs to the oeuvre (a body of about twenty paintings) of the so-called Pseudo-de Vos, a moniker given to an as yet unidentified painter whose style and use of color exhibit a striking affinity to the early work of de Vos.

The present panel is an iconographically unique work: while it treats the well-known story of the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, the central theme does not depict the beheading of Holofernes (Judith can in fact be seen beheading the Assyrian general in the background through the aperture to the left, inside a tiny tent), nor does it show Judith bearing the head of the slain general (which may be seen in the loosely painted aperture to the right). Rather, the foreground is occupied by two elders of Judith’s town. Given that the best-known configuration of a beautiful jewess and two old men in the Old Testament is that of Susannah and the Elders, the fact that here two city fathers kneel before and beseech a female figure who instead instructs them is all the more striking. The present iconography is believed to be the only work that tells the story of Judith and Holofernes in this manner. It is, however, in a rich Northern Renaissance vein of the topos of the so-called ‘power of women’ or ‘Weibermacht’, which was also dealt with in such artistic treatments as Aristotle Ridden by Phyllis or Samson and Delilah.