SLAY

This exhibition pairs two monumental paintings created 400 years apart—one by Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian artist and one of the most successful female painters of the 17th century, and the second by Kehinde Wiley, a Black American contemporary artist celebrated for his recontextualization of Old Master paintings. The subject, Judith and Holofernes, appears repeatedly throughout art history with well-known works by Caravaggio, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Sandro Botticelli, Gustav Klimt, and many others. Taken from the Book of Judith, the tale recounts how a Jewish widow saved the town of Bethulia from the Assyrian army by seducing and then beheading General Holofernes.

Artemisia Gentileschi’s version, one of her most well-known paintings, is depicted with shocking intensity. Struggling limbs and the play of light and dark draw the viewer’s attention to the gruesome act. The work is a powerful statement of Artemisia’s skill as an artist as well as a symbol of the adversity she encountered in a male-dominated field. Many scholars have read the painting as a cathartic revenge fantasy by Artemisia, a rape survivor who endured a scandalous trial in which she was tortured to confirm her testimony. Artemisia painted the scene in 1612, the same year as the trial.