Judith, in a golden gown with her sleeves rolled up, grips Holofernes’s hair with one hand while driving a long sword into his throat with the other. Her face is set in a look of intense concentration, her brow furrowed and lips pressed tightly together as she leans over the man pinned beneath her. Beside her, the younger woman Abra steadies Holofernes by pressing down on his arm, her own face tense and focused on the task at hand.

Holofernes lies sprawled on a bed, his torso twisted and his eyes wide open in shock and terror, blood streaming from his neck and soaking the white sheets beneath him. The violence of the act is underscored by the arc of blood spurting across the bed, staining the linen and pooling beneath his head. The composition is tightly arranged, forcing the viewer’s gaze into the tangle of limbs, fabric, and metal at the center of the canvas.

A deep red drapery falls across Holofernes’s lower body, contrasting sharply with the stark white sheets and the pale flesh of the figures. The background is almost entirely black, throwing the figures into dramatic relief and heightening the sense of immediacy and danger. Light falls strongly from the left, illuminating the women’s faces, arms, and the glistening sword, while leaving much of the scene in shadow.

Gentileschi’s brushwork is precise and realistic, capturing the sheen of the fabrics, the taut muscles of the women’s arms, and the sticky texture of the blood. Every detail, from the gold bracelet on Judith’s wrist to the folds of the sheets, is rendered with a vivid clarity that heightens the drama. The sword, held vertically and shaped like a cross, becomes a central axis in the composition, reinforcing the sense of force and resolve.

Holofernes’s desperate struggle is captured in his outstretched arm, which pushes helplessly against Abra as he is overpowered by the two women. Painted by Artemisia Gentileschi around 1620, Judith Beheading Holofernes draws its subject from the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, recounting the assassination of the Assyrian general Holofernes by the Jewish widow Judith and her handmaiden Abra.