Besides being one of the few women to secure her place in the historic art world, Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi endures as the visionary behind “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” one of the most gruesomely striking paintings ever displayed.

Produced in the early 1600s, the Old Testament story depicts the beheading of an Assyrian general, in all its gory detail, by a Jewish widow, an act that would help save her fellow Israelites. The work is now regarded by many experts as a touchstone of feminist art.