The story of Judith and Holofernes is a popular one in painting from the Renaissance onwards, and is told in the apocryphal Old Testament Book of Judith. A beautiful and wealthy Jewish widow, Judith entered the camp of Assyrians who were besieging Bethulia and slew their general, Holofernes. This painting depicts Judith's moment of triumph; she stands, facing the viewer, holding Holofernes's head in her left hand. To the right, her maid kneels, looking up at her with the sack ready to receive the head. Behind Judith is the suggestion of a tent; a sword lies in the foreground.

The picture surface is damaged, but despite this it seems never to have been of autograph quality. The design of the painting is far superior to its execution, and for this reason it is thought to be after a composition by Maratta which Bellori records as done for the Marchese Niccolò Pallavicini. There is a partly obliterated seal in the lower left-hand corner of the canvas, with what looks like an English coat-of-arms, but the details are not decipherable.