Judith

During the Renaissance, the great biblical figures were also counted among the heroes and heroines of antiquity. Judith, the pious and beautiful widow from the besieged town of Bethulia, an outpost of Jerusalem, saved the city by outwitting Holofernes, Nebuchadnezzar’s military commander. Having charmed him and made him drunk, she cut off his head. The leaderless Assyrians fled when they saw the bloody head hanging on the city walls the next morning.