Lot 1406 Dα

This depiction of Judith with the head of Holofernes originates from the former Scheibler Collection in Cologne. The work was painted by an artist from the workshop of Lucas Cranach and is a slightly smaller copy of the piece from the Burrel Collection kept in the National Gallery in Glasgow. Several of Cranach's works depict the beautiful and wealthy Jewish widow Judith who, together with her maid, murdered the Assyrian general Holofernes and thus saved her city. The most important of these works is the Judith in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, painted around 1530. The work in Glasgow is dated 1530 and, in contrast to the Vienna piece, depicts a landscape in the background on the right. In the present work, this section is one of the most finely painted parts of the work.