No matter how you feel about it, everyone can agree that art is interesting. It makes us think. And one of the greatest things about art is that it can be interpreted a thousand different ways depending on the eye of the beholder. The artist usually has some intent when they initially create a piece, but once it’s out in the public eye, its meaning can be anything. It can also be used for anything (barring copyrights, which do not come into play in this story).
Enter Middle Earth Organics and their pasta sauce. Middle Earth Organics is known for their organic pasta sauces, and each label on their products features a famous Italian painting.
Cool, but what about it? Well, the painting they chose for their tomato and porcini mushroom sauce has been stirring up controversy online.
Beautiful and a little haunting, the painted woman on the label is quite arresting. But what is she looking at? Sorry to burst any bubbles, but the woman in the painting above is not staring with intense concentration at a pot of delicious, simmering sugo.
No. This is what she’s looking at: the man she’s beheading. The image comes from the painting, “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” by the artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (known simply as Caravaggio) in 1599. Judith, seen above, is not making an al dente delight. Judith is cutting off some dude’s head.
The artwork depicts an often-painted Biblical episode from the apocryphal “Book of Judith,” a work excluded from the Hebrew and Protestant Bibles (but included in the Septuagint). The story goes that an Assyrian general, Holofernes, was about to destroy Bethulia, the home of beautiful Jewish widow, Judith. Judith is invited into Holofernes’ tent where she then plies him with drink until he passes out and decapitates him. Not exactly the most appetizing story.
As 11., the unofficial authority on art history, noted, “That unfortunate painting selection could’ve been avoided if they’d just hired an art history major.”
Still, it is on theme for the brand’s packaging. Take a look at the art inspired lineup of sauces.
This article originally appeared seven years ago.
