over the enemy General Holofernes, can be attributed to Elisabetta Sirani, not least because it is signed with her initials.

Born in Bologna on 8 January 1638, Elisabetta was the eldest of five children of the

established artist and art merchant Giovanni Andrea Sirani and his wife Margherita Masini della Mano. An internationally acclaimed painter and printmaker, Elisabetta’s patrons ranged from artisans and merchants, bankers and university academics to the city's political elites, ecclesiastics, and nobility, as well as Italian and European royalty, like the Medici princes, the King of Poland and the Holy Roman Empress.

Despite her early death and the brevity of her career (1654-65) Elisabetta was one

of Bologna's most erudite, innovative and influential artists, especially on the women artists of the city, some of whom she also taught. Her artistic training and cultural formation took place in her father's bottega with its well-equipped humanist library and art collections, one of the most successful and productive artist studios in Bologna. Malvasia claimed that Giovanni Andrea Sirani’s teaching abilities were second to none, and Elisabetta proved to be a most receptive pupil, quick to apprehend the technical skills and theoretical precepts of her art. From Sirani-senior she also learnt printmaking, especially the new developments in etching (aquaforte), which Elisabetta mastered by the time she was 18, making her one of the few women to work in this medium at the time.

This painting bears the hallmarks of Elisabetta’s early style in its compositional harmony, drawing from the formal classicism of Guido Reni, Bologna’s most significant artist who had been her father’s master, and in whose manner she had been taught. The painting also reveals her experimentation

towards a more painterly technique, deeper colouring and strong chiaroscuro that was to characterise her work in the 1660s. Note the broad and long, fluid brushstrokes, typical of Elisabetta’s personal maniera, evident especially in the deep rose cloak, and the emphatic articulation of the folds of the blue drapery of the dress and curtain highlighted in white paint, which shimmer in the light. In excellent condition, the canvas reveals a pentimento behind Judith’s right shoulder, as Elisabetta reworked the volume of the cloak that envelops the heroine. This evidences the artist’s method of painting directly onto the

canvas without cartoons, often changing her concept as she worked the composition.

Malvasia tells us that this “alla prima” method, by which Elisabetta applied the paint wet- on-wet so as to complete a canvas in one sitting, was the complete opposite of her father’s

more laboured classical style of layering veils of paint which were left to dry for extended

periods before completion. In this Elisabetta was closer to Guercino’s macchio fondo,

saturating the canvas with brilliant colour stains.

The painting is a welcome addition to this significant artist’s expanding oeuvre, testament to Elisabetta‘s painterly skills and refined interpretation of the femmes fortes, whose strength and ingenuity she so delighted in portraying.