Mantegna's Uffizi Judith: The Masculinization of the Female Hero

Of the many variations on the Judith theme by Andrea Mantegna and his circle, the autograph drawing at the Uffizi (1491) is the most unconventional. Modeled after Mantegna's portrayal of a glorified Roman centurion (c. 1455, Ovetari Chapel), it presents an unprecedented, celebratory figure of a female hero. Indeed, displaying a triumphant woman who is allowed to appropriate the countenance and attain the stature of a triumphant man, it may be one of the earliest, hitherto unnoticed depictions of a virago in Italian Renaissance art.

Unlike all of her counterparts by Mantegna and his followers, the Uffizi Judith aligns herself with the few images of women from Classical antiquity often perceived as female anomalies. Turning away from the male gaze, adopting a traditionally masculine stance, and featuring an uncommonly muscular right arm, she aligns herself with the Amazons and, in particular, with Athena Promachos. Judith's patrilineal recreation in the Uffizi drawing invokes Athena's patrilineal birth in Greek mythology. Both are the only female warriors who have been figuratively fathered and who have been ennobled as a result.