Judith with the Head of Holofernes, and a Vision of the Virgin and Child Casting Out Evil

This wash drawing is a preparatory study for one of Gottfried Bernhard Göz's painted church ceilings, which were fixtures of 18th-century Bavaria. (The wash technique is oddly appropriate: Holofernes had subjugated Judith's people by cutting off their water supply, and it will be restored with his death.) The upper image of Mary stabbing a serpent revives the medieval idea of Judith and Holofernes as prefigurations of Mary and Satan. Judith is all rococo splendor as she whisks Holofernes' head from his bloody neck.