Artemisia Gentileschi's 'Judith and Holofernes' | Jones Gallery Lecture Series

[@cedfi0z]

In the earlier version the bottom half of the sword looks like she forgot it was supposed to be the sword and made it a part of the blood stain! Adore your analysis and I am so glad to discover Gentileschi, I didn't think I would prefer a different Holofernes depiction than Caravaggio's and so happy to be proved wrong!

[@benjaminduke7344]

For some reason the violence in art history was always at a safe remove, like wire-fu in kung fu films, something directed by Jing Wong...Kungfu Cult Master. Overacted with sound effects for the spray of blood- that sort of thing. Until the beheading propaganda videos of the early 2000's which also had/have a strange sense of the theatrical which only increases their horrific reality. Those events, and now even these paintings seem to create in me a sense of being in history, they cut through the simulacrum, to uncover the actual fragility of the individual caught up in the crush of time.

[@50l12]

Gentileschis version is much more raw than Caravaggios, got to be one of the best feminist pictures in art