Judith Slaying Holofernes is a painting by the Italian early Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, completed in 1612-13 and now at the Museo Capodimonte, Naples, Italy.

The painting shows the moment when Judith, helped by her maidservant Abra, beheads the general after he has fallen asleep in a drunken stupor.

[6] Gentileschi plays into the "wiles of woman" in her painting by literally portraying Judith at the main point of her domination over a man.

As a follower of Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi makes use of chiaroscuro in the painting, with a dark background contrasting with the light shining directly on the scene of Judith beheading Holofernes.

[8] The painting was commissioned by Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici, who died in 1621 shortly after the great canvas was completed.

The Grand Duke was reportedly not pleased with the graphic virility of the final work, and it was only with great difficulty and the help of her friend Galileo Galilei that the painter managed to extract the payment, with a significant delay, that had been agreed with[9] Its location was unknown until documented in the collection of Signora Saveria de Simone in Naples in 1827.

[11] Writer Roger J. Crum notes that, "Judith's gesture, pulling back the general's head, renders sure her next blow, it also makes the neck all the more visible.

Artemisia Gentileschi's contemporary Johann Liss stayed abreast with the Baroque style by including macabre imagery in his painting, Judith in the Tent of Holofernes.

Mary Gerrard points out that Caravaggio "reintroduced a narrative emphasis, but focusing now upon the dramatic rather than the epic features of the story and upon the human conflict between the two principal characters".

[7] Rather than making the scene of Holofernes's beheading more palatable for the viewers, Gentileschi differs by not holding back the gruesome imagery.

[12] Judith beheading Holofernes has been depicted by a number of artists including Giorgione, Titian, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens and Caravaggio.

Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes is believed to be the main inspiration of Gentileschi's work,[12] and his influence shows in the naturalism and violence she brings to her canvas.

A further three paintings by Gentileschi, in Naples, Detroit and Cannes, show her maid covering the head of Holofernes, while Judith herself looks out the frame of the picture.

[13] Although the painting depicts a scene from the Bible, art historians have suggested that Gentileschi drew herself as Judith and her mentor Agostino Tassi, who was tried for and convicted of her rape, as Holofernes.

Gentileschi's biographer Mary Garrard famously proposed an autobiographical reading of the painting, stating that it functions as "a cathartic expression of the artist's private, and perhaps repressed, rage".

[14] Griselda Pollock suggests that the painting should be "read less in terms of its overt references to Artemisia’s experience than as an encoding of the artist's sublimated responses to events in her life and the historical context in which she worked.