Judith: One figure, many women

Exhibition proposed for the course Curating Renaissance art and Exhibitions

The Warburg Institute  |  National Gallery

March 2018

 

Summary:

The story of Judith, the Old Testament Jewish heroine, has had a profound impact in western culture, giving place an innumerable variety of works in many realms such as the visual arts, theater and literature.

The earliest visual representations of Judith’s figure and story date back to the eighth and ninth Centuries. However.  the complexity of this character was consistently explored and exploited during the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period by artists working in different media, offering new readings that went beyond the significations attached to this heroine in the Middle Ages.

This exhibition examines diverse aspects of this exploration, going through some the many shapes and even roles given to Judith’s person in Western art from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries.  These multiple and in many cases conflicting interpretations do not only reflect the particular interests of the artists behind these works or the aesthetic investigations of different artistic periods. More importantly, they are imbedded in social, political and concerns beyond them.