ABSTRACT
The apocryphal story of Judith and Holofernes often served in early modern Europe to illustrate both the power of chastity aided by cosmetics and verbal makeup, and the ease with which unbridled lust makes men lose their heads. The chapter aims to study how this biblical motif and its many appearances in Renaissance and Baroque painting may tease out, by contrast, a different reading of some Shakespearean passages in Love’s Labour’s Lost and Cymbeline. In the early modern period, discretion was often presented as a gendered concept and a preeminent virtue for women. By enlisting the help of Italian Baroque artists, namely, Artemisia Gentileschi, Cristofano Allori and Caravaggio, the essay instead suggests that the textual and especially iconographic tradition based on Judith unveils Shakespeare’s fascination with indiscretion.
