Judith and the Head of Holofernes (Judith I, 1901)

The biblical heroine Judith saved the Jewish people by seducing and slaying the Philistine general Holofernes. Renaissance artists such as Donatello used her as an archetype of patriotism and female courage. In the seventeenth century, Baroque artists such as Caravaggio, Johannes Liss and Artemesis Gentileschi began to explore the psychosexual possibilities of the subject, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that Judith was elevated, alongside Salome, to the status of a fully-fledged femme fatale. Amongst the other artists of this period who depicted Judith in the role of Femme Fatale were Franz von Stuck, and Gustave Mossa. Klimt’s Judith I of 1901 is perhaps the most powerful and disturbing of all his depictions of menacing female sexuality. With her raised head, crowned by an abundance of hair, her strong chin, half-closed eyes and parted lips creating an expression of ecstasy, Klimt’s Judith descends (perhaps via the Belgian symbolist Fernand Khnopff) from Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s influential Beata Beatrix. She is also related to Munch’s Madonna and the girl in Mucha’s Job poster, though the ecstasy of Mucha’s young lady is prompted by nothing more sinister than a drag on a cigarette. The jewelled collar that appears to sever Judith’s own head is also a feature of many of Klimt’s portraits of these years.