This article accompanies the fable
Sacred Prostitute



Salome and Judith

Below is a painting of Salome by Titian early in his career around 1515. Or at least that is the popular view. An alternative view argues that it is in fact "Judith with the Head of Holofernes," another good Jewish girl who was even more popular at the time (in the works of Donatello, Caravaggio, Rubens and others). Whoever she is, she is relatively demure compared with Titian's later paintings of the Venus of Urbino, Mary Magdalene and so on. This painting is in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj - on the Via del Corso, Rome.



Images of Judith, however, tend to be more warrior-like. Below is Lucas Cranach the Elder's Judith with the Head of Holofernes (around 1530), one of several versions he painted. This one is in the Jagdschloss Grunewald in Berlin.

Whatever is going on here, Judith, Salome and beheadings were a certainly a popular theme of the time. A series of such paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi can be seen here.