Judith

Simon Vouet painted Judith around 1625 as an oil-on-canvas work, likely intended for a private or devotional setting typical of early‑Baroque religious art. The painting entered the collection of the Bavarian State Painting Collections and has been displayed at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich since its acquisition, featuring in exhibitions such as The Old Testament – Stories and Figures. It portrays the biblical heroine Judith holding the severed head of Holofernes, a subject that was popular in the French Baroque for its dramatic narrative and moral exemplarity.

Contemporary records and museum documentation confirm the work’s creation date as circa 1620–1625, with no evidence of later alterations or multiple versions being painted by Vouet in the same period.

The Munich canvas belongs to a broader body of work by Simon Vouet devoted to Old Testament heroines, a category of half-length biblical figure that was widely cultivated in Baroque painting. Vouet revisited the Judith theme repeatedly: a version dated 1621 is recorded in Genoa, and a further canvas attributed to him is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where the heroine holds the severed head by the hair rather than resting her hand upon it as in the Alte Pinakothek composition. The painting has been included in the Alte Pinakothek exhibition "The Old Testament – Stories and Figures," situating it within the museum's presentation of scriptural narrative subjects.

Within French seventeenth-century art, the work is associated with the broader category of French Baroque painting, of which Vouet was a leading figure following his return from Italy.

Simon Vouet’s oil painting, created between 1620 and 1625, portrays the biblical heroine Judith. Executed on canvas, the work measures roughly a typical Baroque format and is currently displayed in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek. The composition centers on a solitary female figure illuminated against a dark backdrop, emphasizing the dramatic moment of triumph.