Judith beheading Holofernes

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2019

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how artists from the Middle Ages onwards have been inspired by the Bible story of the widow who killed an Assyrian general who was besieging her village, and so saved her people from his army and from his master Nebuchadnezzar. A symbol of a woman's power and the defiance of political tyranny, the image of Judith has been sculpted by Donatello, painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and, in the case of Caravaggio, Liss and Artemisia Gentileschi, been shown with vivid, disturbing detail. What do these interpretations reveal of the attitudes to power and women in their time, and of the artists' own experiences?

The image of Judith, above is from a tapestry in the Duomo, Milan, by Giovanni or Nicola Carcher, 1555

With

Susan Foister Curator of Early Netherlandish, German and British Painting at the National Gallery

John Gash Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Aberdeen

And

Ela Nutu Hall Research Associate at the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, at the University of Sheffield

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:48.7	the programs. Hello Judith was once one of the most famous women in the Old Testament.
0:54.0	She saved her people, Israel, by killing an enemy general, single-handed.
0:59.2	It was the manner of that killing that inspired countless artists including Caravaggio, Gentilesky and Klimt.
1:05.4	The general was Hollophernies and he fought for Nebuchadneza.
1:09.2	He was besieging Judith's For centuries Judy symbolised a strong woman or humility overcoming pride or the weak defeating
1:25.7	tyrants or the danger of the Phamfatal.
1:28.4	She is sometimes virtuous like Mary, sometimes deceitful like Eve, yet always raised questions about where the power lay
1:34.8	between men and women.
1:36.3	We'd me to discuss Judith and the paintings,
1:38.7	Susan Feister, curator of early Netherlandsish German and British painting at the National Gallery,
	...

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