Francesco Francia

This drawing was traditionally classified as by Andrea Mantegna, which may explain why the dealer, collector, and former owner of the sheet, Charles Fairfax Murray, seems to have paid the extraordinary sum of £488—more than for any other sheet in his collection— when he bought it in 1892. By the time of the publication of the first volume of his collection in 1905, however, it was recognized as by the Bolognese master Francesco Francia.

The early reference to Mantegna, however, is not incongruous. It probably arose from knowledge of a painting by the artist now in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts that also shows the moment when the heroine passes the decapitated head to her servant to dispose of in a sack and which may have inspired Francia. Mantegna did much to spread the subject of Judith and Holofernes among humanist circles, to some extent turning a biblical subject into a classicizing one or at least confusing the distinctions between the two. The Mantegna painting imitates a low relief in gilt bronze, an effect also approximated by Francia’s drawing. Unlike Mantegna’s more monumental and statuesque figures, however, here Judith’s chiton and its ties flutter in decorative billowing folds, resembling classical reliefs of dancing girls or muses. The flowing curls and serene expression of the head of Holofernes bear an uncanny resemblance to figures of Christ. Far from gruesome, the scene serves as the artist’s opportunity to display his mastery of the draped female figure and reclining male nude.

The drawing illustrates a scene from the Apocryphal book of Judith. The Jewish heroine undertook to kill Holofernes, leader of the enemy army that was suppressing her people. She visited him and when he fell asleep took his sword and severed his head from his body. Judith was considered an exemplar of patriotic courage and civic virtue, and her story was a popular motif in Renaissance art.

Francia painted a fresco of the same subject in the private rooms of Giovanni II Bentivoglio in the Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna, which was destroyed at the time of the expulsion of the family in the spring of 1507. This, however, differed quite substantially from the present composition. According to Vasari’s description, Judith was depicted on the verge of striking the mortal blow to slay Holofernes, and the maid was old and wrinkled. The fresco was presumably in color, but the adjoining scene of the disputation of philosophers was colored to look like bronze.¹

In addition to the differences in composition, the detailed execution and the use of parchment for this fine piece clearly indicate that it was never a study for the Palazzo Bentivoglio fresco but instead, like the previous drawing of an antique sacrifice (I, 95), an independent work destined for a circle of humanist collectors. A second, nearly identical version of this composition by Francia, also on parchment but lacking the green wash, is in the Louvre.² Furthermore, studio copies in the Albertina and the Louvre attest to the popularity of Francia’s composition.³ Purportedly, Francia made a drawing of this subject as a gift for Raphael. In his Felsina Pittrice of 1678, Malvasia published a letter by Raphael to Francia dated ⁴ September 1508 that mentions the work. Later scholars, most convincingly John Shearman, have however argued that the letter was fabricated by Malvasia.⁵ Either way, the renown of Francia’s Judith drawing is clear.

—REP

Footnotes:

1. “Messer Giovanni Bentivogli had caused his palace to be painted by diverse masters of Ferrara and Bologna, and by certain others from Modena; but, having seen Francia’s experiments in fresco, he determined that this master should paint a scene on one wall of an apartment that he occupied for his own use. There Francia painted the camp of Holofernes, guarded by various sentinels both on foot and on horseback, who were keeping watch over the pavilions; and the while that they were intent on something else, the sleeping Holofernes was seen surprised by a woman clothed in widow’s garments, who, with her left hand, was holding his hair, which was wet with the heat of wine and sleep, and with her right hand she was striking the blow to slay her enemy, the while that an old wrinkled handmaid, with the true air of the most faithful slave, and with her eyes fixed on those of her Judith in order to encourage her, was bending down and holding the basket near the ground, to receive therein the head of the slumbering lover. This scene was one of the most beautiful and most masterly that Francia ever painted, but it was thrown to the ground in the destruction of that edifice at the time of the expulsion of the Bentivogli, together with another scene over that same apartment, coloured to look like bronze, and representing a disputation of philosophers, which was excellently wrought, with his conception very well expressed. These works brought it about that he was loved and honoured by Messer Giovanni and all the members of his house, and, after them, by all the city.” See Vasari 1996, 1:579; Vasari 1878–85, 3:538–39.
2. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 5606. See Bologna 1988, no. 66; Paris 2001, no. 5; Bologna 2002, no. 7; cited by Schulze Altcappenberg as having been made in 1504–5.
3. Albertina, Vienna, inv. 1454 (see Birke and Kertész, 1992–97, 2:776), and Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. rf 522 (see Paris 2001, 30).
4. See Malvasia 1841, 1:47, “Se in contrecambio riceverò quello dela vostra istoria della Giuditta, io lo riporrò fra le cose più care e preziose.” See Shearman 2003, 2:1469–74.