Liz' article on Donatello's statue of Judith Beheading Holofernes is fascinating. Here are two paintings by Botticelli, both in the Uffizi, from around 1470, one of Judith returning to her home city with her handmaid carrying Holofernes' head in a basket, and the other of his guards entering his tent to find his decapitated body. This was nearly 20 years before the citizens' revoltt against Piero de' Medici's brutal rule that Liz describes, so I wonder what was going on at the time Botticelli painted these scenes of Judith's revenge against a tyrant? Who commissioned B's pictures, and were they just more Medici propaganda about how they hated tyrants?

BOTTICELLI'S TWO PAINTINGS OF JUDITH's REVENGE