These differences display the skill of a cultivated Baroque painter, with the adept use of chiaroscuro and realism to express the violent tension between Judith, Abra, and the dying Holofernes.

[2] Gentileschi centers her work on the labor of the killing, which forces the gaze to start amid the tangle of blood, limbs, and metal.

Holofernes, whose blood puddles and spurts a deep red to contrast the white sheets of his deathbed, is overpowered and without hope.

Unable to stand by while her people suffered, Judith set out to enact divine justice by killing their general, Holofernes, and ultimately dismantling the Assyrian forces.

This new theology fundamentally rejected the perceived worship of religious iconography on the grounds of idolatry, with the guidance of figures such as John Calvin and Martin Luther.

[11] Baroque art served as an extension of the influence of the Catholic Church, most often depicting historical and religious imagery through heightened realism.

This similarity in theme and composition may have been due to the work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, whose style so influenced the Gentileschi's.

[6] In the late 1700s, a Grand Duchess disapproved of the gruesome depiction of a usually timid scene, and had the painting moved to an isolated part of the Uffizi.

This history is relevant as Gentileschi's early life has come to inform the perspectives of many contemporary feminist art historians, including Mary Garrard,[6] and particularly in the case of Judith Slaying Holofernes.

There exists a pattern of Gentileschi using her figure as a model in her work which has afforded the artist the innate ability to render the female form.

Gentileschi's violent depiction of the Judith theme is, according to Mary Garrard,[4][6] most often made parallel to the traumatic events within her early life and is centered on gendered defiance.

To the contrary, scholars such as Griselda Pollock and Elena Ciletti[5] push back against this perspective, arguing instead that the near-constant mention of her assault only succeeds in limiting Gentileschi's image.