Minneapolis Institute of Art

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

Gottfried Bernhard Göz

Date

c. 1749

Medium

Pen, brown ink and wash, heightened with white gouache on laid paper

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

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. Germany, Europe

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