When I first saw this piece of lace, I was intrigued by its subject matter – what story is it telling, and for what audience? It seemed like a biblical story, but not one I was familiar with. As it turns out this is because the story of Judith beheading Holofernes comes from the book of Judith, which is a deuterocanonical book. This means it’s accepted as part of the Catholic and Orthodox bibles but is considered to be apocryphal in the Anglican tradition, which is the one I grew up with.
The story takes place during an Assyrian invasion of Judith’s homeland. She is a beautiful widow who is faithful to her God, who gradually gains the favour of the enemy general Holofernes by predicting that he will be victorious in battle. Eventually, she is invited into his tent, where she waits for him to fall into a drunken stupor before beheading him with the help of her servant woman. In doing so, she protects her city and prevents the Assyrian forces from attacking Jerusalem.
We could get into the historicity of this tale, whether the names of the key figures and cities were changed and for what reason, when it was all written down, and so on. The deuterocanonical book is fascinating in itself, but in the context of this lace panel I’d like to ask – who chose this story? What did it mean to them, and how was the lace used? What message was it intended to send? Although we can’t definitively answer these questions, there are a few clues that can help us better to understand this piece.
We know approximately when the lace was made based on the style and technique, which place it in the mid-17th century. The motif of Judith beheading Holofernes was popular in European art at this time – many people are familiar with the paintings by Caravaggio or Artemisia Gentileschi from this period or a little earlier. I initially thought the lace might be Venetian due to its raised elements and the liturgical tradition in Venetian lace. However, the resemblance of the raised elements to English stumpwork, as well as comparable objects from England, suggest that the lace is probably of British origin. That narrows down where it was made and used. But there’s still so much we don’t know…
As much as I’d love to make the case for a feminist interpretation of this piece, as others have done for Artemisia Gentileschi’s version of the same scene, there just isn’t enough information available. Lace is a far more anonymous medium than painting – we don’t know who made it, who commissioned its manufacture, even whose hair is used for that of the figures. The panel’s shape indicates it may have been part of a casket carried by an aristocratic woman, but the scene could have been chosen to symbolise many things – chastity, piety in the face of opposition, any number of themes that could relate to female power but don’t necessarily do so here.
Ultimately what I love about this lace artwork is that the detail and beauty of its design are as captivating as they were 400 years ago, while the narrative element, in losing the significance it held to its original owner, gains an element of mystery that is fascinating to us today.
Anna Cowles
Volunteer