Judith with the Head of Holofernes

This engraving illustrates a scene from the Apocryphal book of Judith. Judith, angered that her country was under foreign rule, decided to kill the enemy leader, Holofernes. She visited him and drank wine with him until he fell asleep; then, taking his sword, she “struck his neck twice with all her might, and severed his head from his body.” Girolamo Mocetto depicted Judith immediately after this act, handing Holofernes’s severed head to her maid.