You’ve likely heard of Caravaggio’s early-17th-century painting Judith Beheading Holofernes. It pictures the decisive moment from the Biblical story of Judith, a Jewish widow who seduces the Assyrian general Holofernes at a banquet, gets him drunk, and then beheads him. During the decapitation, an aged servant clutches a bag in readiness for the general’s head. Though the scene is violent, the Baroque masterpiece is bathed in golden light. Judith’s hands are like marble while the face and chest of Holofornes are darkened by creeping shadow. The scene was reinterpreted by Sandro Botticelli, Donatello, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Andrea Mategna, but it is Caravaggio’s painting that sparks collective memory. For this exhibition, the chilling masterpiece has traveled from Rome to Minneapolis; 14 different interpretations of the scene hang alongside the centerpiece. —Elena Clavarino