Judith looks out with parted lips, heavy eyelids, and a hand resting near Holofernes’s severed head. Klimt makes the biblical heroine erotic, dangerous, and triumphant. The painting unsettles because victory and desire occupy the same face.

Oil on canvas with gold ground, narrow vertical format, and decorative surface pattern.

Judith embodies female power, seduction, and violence. The gold setting transforms the scene into an icon of dangerous beauty.

Fin-de-siècle Vienna was fascinated by sexuality, psychology, and the femme fatale.

The painting shaped modern images of powerful, eroticized female figures in Symbolist and Secessionist art.