The 50 plates / Plate 29 of 50
Plate 29 of 50
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
Judith
Copy after Andrea Mantegna (Becker: Mantegna)
In a museum
The drawing
Judith, dressed in elaborate Renaissance garments, lowers the severed head of Holofernes into a sack held open by her elderly maidservant. She grips his hair with one hand and holds a long sword in the other. The figures stand against a dark background, their sculptural drapery and carefully articulated forms reflecting the classical influence associated with Mantegna's work.
Becker, 1922
As Felix Becker published it in 1922.
- Attribution
- Andrea Mantegna
- Title as printed
- Judith
- Title in English
- Judith
- Medium and size
- Brush and pen, 34 × 23.2 cm
- Collection in 1922
- Julius Böhler jun., Munich
Today
Modern cataloguing and the drawing’s whereabouts, as far as they are known.
- Status
- In a museum
- Where is it now?
- Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, I 488 (PK), as an anonymous copy after a lost Mantegna composition. The museum’s record cites Becker 1922, pl. 29.
- Attribution today
- Anonymous copyist after Andrea Mantegna
- Title today
- Judith with the Head of Holophernes
- Date
- c. 1495–1500
- Medium
- Pen and brush in brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white
- Dimensions
- 33.9 × 23.3 cm (surviving sheet)
- Provenance
- Art dealer Julius W. Böhler, Lucerne; Franz W. Koenigs, Haarlem, acquired in 1929; D.G. van Beuningen, Rotterdam, acquired with the Koenigs Collection in 1940 and donated to Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (per the museum’s record).
The sheet in this copy
Sources
- Felix Becker, Handzeichnungen alter Meister in Privatsammlungen (Leipzig, 1922), plate 29.
- Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen — official collection recordhttps://www.boijmans.nl/en/collection/artworks/58880/judith-with-the-head-of-holophernes