This portrait represents a lady from the court of Saxony, an important German territory within the Holy Roman Empire, where Lucas Cranach ran a family workshop. The unidentified sitter appears in the guise of Judith, a biblical heroine who saved her city from an Assyrian siege by seducing and decapitating the enemy general, Holofernes. Presenting Judith in contemporary dress, gripping the astonishingly lifelike head of Holofernes, this portrait embodies early modern Europe’s fascination with the heroine’s virtue and dangerous beauty. At bottom left appears the winged serpent of Cranach’s coat of arms, conferred in 1508 and used thereafter as his workshop’s signature.