There is yet another picture of Sandro's here, which you must look at before going back to Giotto: the small Judith in the room next the Tribune, as you return from this outer one. It is just under Lionardo's Medusa. She is returning to the camp of her Israel, followed by her maid carrying the head of Holofernes. And she walks in one of Botticelli's light dancing actions, her drapery all on flutter, and her hand, like Fortitude's, light on the sword-hilt, but daintily—not nervously, the little finger laid over the cross of it.
And at the first glance—you will think the figure merely a piece of fifteenth-century affectation. 'Judith, indeed!—say rather the daughter of Herodias, at her mincingest.'
Well, yes—Botticelli is affected, in the way that all men in that century necessarily were. Much euphuism, much studied grace of manner, much formal assertion of scholarship, mingling with his force of imagination. And he likes twisting the fingers of hands about, just as Correggio does. But he never does it like Correggio, without cause.
Look at Judith again,—at her face, not her drapery,—and remember that when a man is base at the heart, he blights his virtues into weaknesses; but when he is true at the heart, he sanctifies his weaknesses into virtues. It is a weakness of Botticelli's, this love of dancing motion and waved drapery; but why has he given it full flight here?
Do you happen to know anything about Judith yourself, except that she cut off Holofernes' head; and has been made the high light of about a million of vile pictures ever since, in which the painters thought they could surely attract the public to the double show of an execution, and a pretty woman,—especially with the added pleasure of hinting at previously ignoble sin?
When you go home to-day, take the pains to write out for yourself, in the connection I here place them, the verses underneath numbered from the book of Judith; you will probably think of their meaning more carefully as you write.
Begin thus:
"Now at that time, Judith heard thereof, which was the daughter of Merari, ... the son of Simeon, the son of Israel." And then write out, consecutively, these pieces—
Chapt. viii., verses 2 to 8. (Always inclusive,) and read the whole chapter.
Chapt. ix., verses 1 and 5 to 7, beginning this piece with the previous sentence, "Oh God, oh my God, hear me also, a widow."