Caravaggio, Michelangelo. Judith Beheading Holofernes. 1598-1599, National Gallery of Ancient Art, Rome.
Everything a painter depicts is intentional. The painting is very different from the photograph. Where an amateur photographer feels a stirring in his heart when looking at the world, and quickly moves to capture that feeling by the camera he holds, and fails to do so, the painter does not approach the world as it lays before him, but instead a blank canvas, which holds the possibility for the emergence of his vision, in wait for the painter that would approach it.
As such, every detail in a painting is accounted for, is anticipated, is reckoned with, is placed exactly where it was placed. The objects and subjects that are depicted in a painting don’t fall haphazardly together as the world does in the framing of a photograph, and although there are on the fly revisions, movements, changes on the behalf of the painter as he journeys through the process of the painting, these are nonetheless corrections made in a course that is being drafted.
The purview of the painter, the artist more generally speaking, is the use of the symbol, synecdoche, metaphor, analogy, but other devices too—such as arrangement, organization, perspective, lighting, which is used to give the spectator a way into the confines of the painting. We are able to learn who is who, and where those people are, as well as the emotions on their face, the drama of the moment as seen in the tension between object and desire, we, the audience, the critics, are able to understand what is being depicted, we are able to uncover motives, we are able to unearth attitudes of the artist in response to the motives that is being represented.
Unlike the audience, the critic also journeys into the history—context—of the painting. He is able to uncover motives and attitudes by virtue of biography. If you look up critical reviews of Judith, you will learn that the painting is a depiction of the biblical story of Judith saving her people from the Assyrian general Holofernes, by way of seduction, and when at night, with Holofernes asleep and drunk, found an opportunity, a moment to alter the arrangement of the threads of fates, with a sword and her hand clutching tufts of curled hair in her fist, beheading the general, depriving the army of direction, and averting their gaze from her own people. We can learn this by manner of historical analysis, but can we also see it in the painting itself, and more than that, the emotional appeal of that moment, the pathos of it? Therein lies the human element, the thing we find evocative.
The first thing we apprehend, before we look at the objects, the look on Judith’s face, and the general arrangement or relation of the things, we find ourselves coming to the colors themselves, our own apprehension of those colors together, how they relate. We later come to an understanding of why these things make us feel the way they do, but for now we feel it deep in our hearts, before it has a name, a word, a logos.
The figure that hangs oppressively, more than the sword, more than the mysterious woman behind Judith, is the vibrant, violent red of the curtain which is placed above the action of the beheading, above the characters, and lies behind them—were we to analyze the nature of this curtain, which is more than an accident, more than a mere curtain, where the color, the placement of the curtain is all intentional, we might learn something about the pathos of this moment, its lurking influence. We know that where this scene takes place, by virtue of historical context, but also by the nudity of the man, the lack of natural light—unlike the sun’s nature, which casts shadows around the characters, and has an angled perspective, we see instead the front of the characters cast in light, almost as if the only source of light is the eyes of the audience, beholding the scene. We could take this almost to be a candlelight, laying on a table. It is obviously taking place indoors, but more than that, due to the curtain, which is not placed before a window, we know that this is taking place in an encampment of sorts, which, based on educated guesses, is a kind of military place for rest, but of a kind that is much higher up than what a foot-soldier would be allowed, if any at all. So we know based on this alone, the man who is being killed is a man of status, of importance, as well as one of good health. One could argue he is of violent capacity, based on the muscularity of his body—we see well defined shoulders, biceps, triceps, and pecs. Like the nature of a painting, the body of the man in this way is intentional, and we can devise his motive from his body the way we can unearth the context of the painting from what it depicts without the aid of historical or allegorical context, although we can use both things as a way to verify or validate our analysis that takes place within the boundaries of the frame provided.
To return to the red curtain, which we now know hangs above and behind the scene, which takes place between a girl (not a woman, as she has a youthful air to her) and a high ranking official of a military in the place where only close and trusted relations are allowed, we can maybe understand something about the perspective of the red curtain as it stands in relation to the scene that is unfolding, which we are witnessing only a critical moment of. The red curtain—it is above the scene and characters; it is behind them; it is the only object in the background that is cast in light, by virtue of the perspective of the light, which stands, based on re-engineering the angles of shadows cast on the bodies of the characters, at the height of the girl’s shoulders. Interestingly enough, the part of the curtain that is cast in light begins around the shoulder of the man, where the beheading begins, and travels to the length of the girl’s shoulder. The placement of this curtain’s visibility is crucial, insofar as it tells us something about the nature of what it symbolizes. Due to the red curtain’s placement, to say nothing about the red just yet, which says something itself, but also helps contextualize the placement, we can surmise that the curtain has something to say about the violent act which is occurring. We could even say that it symbolizes the violence itself—as a matter of it being a curtain, which we can guess to be a kind of fine silk or made of a material like it, due to how it holds or catches the light, we can see it is soft to the touch, and not rough, we also know that it is an object that is without emotion, animism, motive, although it is still riven with movement, as can be seen in the gentle folding of itself. This sounds quite a bit like the description we can give to violence itself, and the perspective that it holds towards the characters who do its bidding, despite the motive of the characters who would use violence as a tool or device. To further provide proof for our claim that the red curtain is the violent will incarnate, we can see that the left side portion of the curtain, the part which hangs over the beginning to be beheaded head of the man, is cast in a muted, or darker light than the more vibrant red of the part that hangs above the arm of the girl which is holding the sword. One could argue that the darkness of that left-side red, or let’s say bloodied, perhaps, curtain, is telling us about the ending of the man, the military general’s life. We can also see that the part which hangs above the beheaded man’s head is less folded and convoluted than the part which hangs above the arm of the girl. Could this mean that in death we stop our struggling? This might not hold true when you consider the forever-shocked expression on the general’s face. No, we might say that the less-folded part of the curtain says something more about the general’s relationship to violence. We can make a well-founded guess that a military man has a more distant, cold, and calculated relationship to violence, death, and conflict than the girl, who, we can tell by virtue of the girl’s complex emotion on her face, that she has a more complicated and virginal relationship to violence. We can surmise this as well from the presence of the old woman, who holds a domineering and determined posture, and is likely a matriarchal or authoritative figure in the girl’s life. The folds of the curtain and the vibrancy of the red that hangs above her arm all tells us that this girl is not used to doing violent things, is dressed well, has a maid of some sorts, which also tells us something about the girl’s biography, which is likely higher class, and perhaps an aristocrat, if we are to guess about the kind of woman that a general would marry; at the very least, we know that the girl is not a prostitute, a girl who is only used for sexual fulfillment, and is treated with disdain, indifference, and the like. At the very least, we know that prostitutes don’t have maids, they don’t have nice clothes, they wouldn’t bear the overall appearance that the girl has.
To say more about the girl, and her motive, we can look to her clothes. We see that she is dressed in white and gold—further signifying our suspicion of her upper class heritage and lifestyle, of purity and wealth, respectively. We can see that the gold of her hair resembles the gold of her clothes, that she is an aristocrat in more ways than a manner of dress, that her actual body and hair and face resembles the clothes she wears; she is the living embodiment of what her clothes say. We also see what is clutched in the gnarled and complicated hands of the old woman is that same gold cloth; knowing the relationship between the girl’s hair and her gold clothes, and the way the old woman is grasping the gold materials in her hand, as exacerbated by the simple look of angry determination on her face, we can see something extraordinary about the relationship between the three characters by virtue of the old woman’s hands—they grip the girl’s clothes tightly, almost commanding the girl. We can understand this holding of the clothes in the way a maid would carry an aristocrat girl’s long dress, but we also can understand something about the rhetorical motive of the old woman, that is beyond the domain of the maid, as allowed by the relationship between the girl’s hair and the gold clothes—we can safely say that the old woman is controlling the girl’s violence, that she grips her dress like she would the girl’s hair, the way a person would the hair of a horse that it is trying to steer. The posture of the girl and the placement of the old woman’s hands also tells us something—notice how the girl is leaning away from the act, as if she is repulsed by it on some level; her torso stands farthest out from her body’s line—her shoulders and head curve backward, away from the scene of the murder, and yet the woman’s hands are placed exactly on the horizontal plane of where the girl’s torso is closest, apart from the hands, to the act. We can look at this and perhaps even view it as if the old woman is pushing the girl towards the murder, and that the girl is struggling against this push, even still as she cleaves the man’s head from his body. We can further solidify this claim by the sheer focus of the woman’s mad, single-minded aim, which is towards the man’s beheading. The whites of the old woman’s eyes are seen above her iris, but not beneath the iris, which tells us something about the emotional nature of what the old woman is experiencing during this moment—that to lift the eyebrows in this way, considering her age, her wrinkles, and probably the passive discontent that is normal in an old spinster’s age, is that she feels completely involved, aware, completely bearing witness to the violence that is unfolding, as one would a dream that is finally coming to pass, which would be rather unlike the fully rounded revealing of the whites of all sides of her eyes, which would say something instead like shock, which wouldn’t occur if the old woman is the architect of this scene.
To lay a claim on the nature of the old woman, knowing all we know about the general, about the aristocratic girl, about the way she is looking at the scene of violence and the way she is holding the threads of gold cloth that resembles the girl’s hair, we could safely say, I believe, that this old woman is a Fate, as understood by Old Greece. She holds the thread of this moment in time, she guides it, directs it, this moment which will change not only the man’s life, that of the passage from life to death, but also what his passage implicates to the environment and lives that he is responsible for, as we can guess from the status we can estimate him to have based on everything discussed so far—this man’s death will have wide-reaching impacts on a war, on the lives of those affected by war. All this information, this context, this arrangement leads us to believe that the old woman, who is standing to the far right, behind the girl, who we can say is in control, is like that of the Fates, which is neither being explicitly acted upon, nor fulfilling an action in the kinetic sense, is nonetheless fulfilling a more abstract kind of action—that of the motive, the vision, the rhetoric of the moment. A final note on this is that, if it hasn’t been made clear enough yet that this old woman is not a mere maid, but instead is one of the Fates, is her skin, which resembles the gold cloth that she holds—her skin, her body, bears a resemblance in its color to the threads that she holds, which is rather unlike the girl’s skin, which is pale and white, but not even in the stark coldness of her clothes, which tells us that she is more human than the old woman, and less bloodthirsty.
Moving beyond the old woman now, and finally to the face of the girl, we can learn more about the human element of the violent moment, which is rather unlike the inanimate and inhumane, blunt and cold affect of Fate, and of the nature of violence itself, as presented to us by the symbolic depth of the vibrant red of the curtain.
Looking at the middle of her brow, we can see that it is furrowed, brought together into a fold, into a conflict of sorts. Scholars say that generally this girl is determined, perhaps even hates the man she is murdering in the war-time tent, which is an easy interpretation to reach considering that she is indeed killing him. But the brow gives something away that tells us a different story, and one that adds a color to her overall motive as the aristocratic girl who seduces a general in order to kill him.
In order to be a cold, calculating assassin of this nature, a femme fatale, as some may wish to view her, we would assume that as she kills him, she would feel nothing, no sense of conflict, that despite the courting, the slow falling into love, which was mere artifice, and despite the sex, that she was, as all true femme fatales are capable as understood by the wishes of the feminine psyche, able to divorce herself from the pathos of the sex, the consummation of the seduction. She should, if viewed this way, be able to kill a man she seduced under the shadow of this act waiting to be fulfilled, as predestined, as dreamed by Fate, be able to carry out this deed unfeeling. We can clearly see this is not the case. Despite the motive projected onto her by the old woman, Fate, and despite the desire for some scholars to view the girl as a femme fatale, she feels a terrible conflict, an emotional one that plays alongside the violent act, as symbolized by the knotted, turning over itself, almost like a bloody ocean, the folding of the curtain, which is unlike the rest of the curtain, the rest of the violence, as it hangs just above the girl only. Yes, we can say that the girl’s face tells us quite a bit about her relationship to violence, not only in terms of her being acted through by Fate, but also through violence itself—she stands against it, even as she fulfills it, even as she carries out the act with all the signs of predestination that we behold.
The fact that this is a betrayal not only in a rhetorical sense, but also in an emotional sense, is further allied by the complete shock of the general’s face—who is killed in the place he viewed as safe, in the war-time tent, where surely there are guards to stop a mere assassin from entering, who is nude, evidently sleeping, so we know this takes place at night, but is also looking into the youthful face of the girl he had come to love during a time of war use a sword, an amoral technology which renders the kinetic inequalities of man from woman, from muscle to soft girlish flesh, as null. Technology, in the way it is depicted in this painting, at night, in a tent, held by a girl unaccustomed to violence, nonetheless moves to kill the primal, traditional tyrant of violence, the male. What this says, especially when considered by the positioning of Fate as it relates to the unfolding of violence, about the nature of technology’s relationship to man’s relationship to violence can be mirrored perhaps in the opening dialogue of a movie called Roger Dodger, 2002, which I have drawn attention to before. Whether man’s relationship to violence can be transfigured in the way Caravaggio depicts it, as Fate dreams it, as Roger orates in the film, is a question I will leave unanswered, although will draw us back upon in a way.
To return to the emotional conflict of the girl, we can guess at something beyond the confines of the painting. Outside of this moment in time, used to alter fate, should we assume that this girl stands to be forever changed by the psychological burden of the fulfillment of this Fate-willed violence? Or would she, just as she finds herself pathologically involved in the death that she blows, despite the artifice of seduction, also find her relationship to sexual desire and fulfillment not be changed forever, but only to be deepened, as a response to the inner conflict that she feels to have acted out the violent act? I would posit that she wouldn’t become an assassin, insofar as we know that she cannot help but be what her nature intends, in the way her hair resembles the cloth she wears that tells us about her upbringing. I would say it is not only possible, but it is plausible that she will not go further into violence, but that she will retract from it, reflexively, the way Dostoevsky depicts in the turning over of Raskolnikov’s mind after he commits murder against his supposed oppressor, the landlord, which takes a similar kind of figure as the general does. That, after killing one’s supposed suppressor, you don’t find yourself there waiting as a conqueror, but instead as human. That, despite yourself, against the tide of logic, reason, and thought, you found the innermost sanctity of your soul crying out in defiance to the technology that you wielded, as fulfillment of fate.
Therein lies the soul, the pathos of this painting—a commentary, brilliantly portrayed by Caravaggio, of such complex subjects as the relationship between humanity and war, the girl and the general, the fate and violence, the situation that yielded the possibility of this unfolding, the private tent, and the arrangement that all this implicates about eternal questions about man’s relationship to the endless march of history, and the role that technology plays, insofar as it enters into a dialogue with our long tradition of war, liberation, sex, and fate.
In the emergence of this great kairotic moment, what does the pathos of the girl tell us, not only about herself, but about the nature of the human, and its carrying out of violent ends, which is demanded by nature? I will assert, with great boldness, that it is not what we anticipated; that, at that moment where we rearranged the threads of fate, both as an actor and as a director, we didn’t find a triumphant spirit, we didn’t find victory, we didn’t find greatness. What we found was what always waited for us, clever and clandestine as the wordless wind, which carries on its wingless back the scent of old memories finally recaptured. We found the cliche, the archetype, the old will of the spirit that birthed us all. We found the word, finally. We found it—her name. It was Love. And there we stood with a sword, only learning its name as we moved to kill it. When I look at the girl’s face, I don’t see the spirit of victory, I see her preparing to weep.