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Judith I

Oil on canvas with gold leaf frame (1901) by Gustav Klimt. Depicts Judith of the Book of Judith holding the severed head of Holofernes, her expression ecstatic and erotic rather than triumphant. A defining image of the fin-de-siècle femme fatale and one of Klimt's most reproduced works.

Scholarly Significance

Klimt's Judith I (1901) is among the most iconic images of the femme fatale in fin-de-siècle art. The gold-framed panel conflates the biblical Judith with a modern Viennese woman, charging the subject with erotic power.

Notes

  • ·The painting was long misidentified as Salome (another femme fatale who demanded a severed head), suggesting the ambiguity between the two biblical types in the fin-de-siècle imagination.
  • ·Klimt's model for Judith is thought to have been Adele Bloch-Bauer — the same woman he later painted in the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.
  • ·The gold-framed panel integrates the decorative frame into the pictorial composition — a Secession ideal of unified art.
  • ·Judith was a popular subject in Viennese art circles: seen as the archetypal autonomous, dangerous woman.
  • ·Klimt painted a second version (Judith II / Salome, 1909, Ca' Pesaro Venice) in which the erotic charge is even more explicit.
  • ·The painting is permanently displayed at the Belvedere, Vienna, where it is among the most visited works.