| Detroit Institute of Arts Museum

Judith was a biblical Jewish heroine who used her beauty to seduce, then decapitate, the commander-in-chief of the Assyrian army, Holofernes, and thus save her people. The book of Judith is included in the Old Testament Apocrypha. Executed in the last decade of the artist's long life, this interpretation of Judith's story shows Titian's extraordinary freedom of style. Not only has the artist altered the traditional iconography of the subject by replacing the old woman attendant with a black page, but the lower part of the picture displays the loose and broken brushstrokes typical of Titian's late pictures. While the contrast between the expressionist face of the giant and the smooth texture of Judith's is jarring, it also reinforces the disparity between the heroine and her conquest, as if femininity has won over roughness and violence.

by 1677, collection of Marchese Carlo Gerini [1616-73] (Palazzo, Gerini, Florence, Italy)

1759, Marchese Andrea Gerini [1691-1766] (Palazzo, Gerini, Florence, Italy)

1825, Marchese Giovanni Gerini [1770–1825] (Palazzo, Gerini, Florence, Italy)

December 1, 1825, auction, no. 272, Collection Gerini (Florence, Italy). 1829, collection of John Rodwell (London, England). by 1915, collection of Colonel William Cornwallis West [1835-1917] (Ruthin Castle, Denbighshire, Wales and Newlands Manor, Hampshire, England)

1917, by decent to his son Major George Cornwallis-West [1874-1951]

July 11, 1919, (Christie's, London, England) auction Major Cornwallis-West, no. 75. 1923-1928, (A. L. Nicholson, London, England). 1935, (Dr. Siegfried Aram, New York, New York, USA)

1935, purchased by Edsel Bryant Ford [1893-1943] as a gift to the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

1935-present, found in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

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Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari. Ithaca, 1991, p. 50, note 23. Polleross, Friedrich. "Between Typology and Psychology: The Role of the Identification Portrait in Updating Old Testament Representations." Artibus et Historiae 12, no. 24 (1991): 75–117, p. 111. Joannides, Paul. "Titian's Judith and Its Context: The Iconography of Decapitation." Apollo 135, no. 361 (March 1992), p. 170, note 23. Erickson, Peter. "Representations of Blacks and Blackness in the Renaissance." Criticism 35, no. 4 (Fall 1993): pp. 506, 522. Le Siècle de Titien. Exh. cat., Grand Palais. Paris, 1993, p. 676, cat. 260 (ill.). Henshaw, Julia, ed. A Visitor's Guide: The Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1995, p. 179 (ill.). Roberts, Helene, ed. Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: vol. 1. Chicago, 1998, p. 318. Rosenauer, A. "Zu einem von Tizian ubermalten Porträt Kaiser Karls V." Römische Historische Mitteilungen 41. Vienna, 1999, pp. 311–321, figs. 1, 2, 7 (ill.). Valcanover, Francesco. 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Titian, Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, ca. 1570, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Edsel B. Ford, 35.10.