Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes

The deed is already done. A single candle lights Judith's raised hand while she listens for footsteps, and the drama is not the violence but the held breath after it. Artemisia — the finest of Caravaggio's heirs, and a woman who painted Judith again and again — made Detroit's version the largest and most theatrical of them. It is one of the great candlelight pictures of the seventeenth century.