Judith 1610 - 1669

Ludolf Büsinck made this chiaroscuro woodcut, Judith, sometime in the first half of the 17th century. It depicts Judith from the Book of Judith, an apocryphal text in the Hebrew Bible, as she delivers the head of Holofernes to her maidservant after assassinating him. This dramatic print was made in Germany at a time of great social and religious upheaval in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The story of Judith was popular because it celebrated the triumph of the weak over the strong, often interpreted as a prefiguration of the Virgin Mary's triumph over the devil. The image may reflect the social tensions of the era, with Judith embodying the power of the common people to overthrow tyranny, but also anxieties about gender roles and the potential for female power to disrupt social order. To fully understand the layers of meaning in this woodcut, one might turn to historical texts, theological treatises, and studies of prints and popular imagery in the early modern period. Through such research, we can start to unpack the complex social and institutional contexts in which such images were made and circulated.