Johann Liss, Judith in the Tent of Holofernes, 1622. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/johann-liss-judith-in-the-tent-of-holofernes
Sheryl Sandberg, author Lean In and COO of Facebook, is one of the most powerful women in America. When news that user data stored on the Facebook platform had been breached broke on March 17, 2018, Sandberg gave a press conference. ABC News captured her image in shadowy chiaroscuro, wearing a sidelong expression. This image, a moving picture still, captures Sandberg in a pose and lighting reminiscent of Judith, the apocryphal/deuterocanonical heroine.
Both Judith and Sheryl Sandberg are complex women who have been represented as uncomplicated heroines in the literary canon. Judith's canon is understood as an allegory: her virtues (fortitude, temperance, prudence, justice) defeat Holofernes' vice (folly, venality, cowardice, lust). Likewise, Sandberg's Lean In presents the author as a feminist icon. Artistic representations of these women challenge the narratives about them.
Famously painted by Titian, Gentileschi, Caravaggio, Klimt, Wiley, et al, Judith is often depicted in a symbolic shadow, more profound than chiaroscuro. Judith's is the shadow of paradox, for hers is the justice of the vigilante. Brought into the tent of Holofernes, the enemy general, under a false flag of surrender, she seduces, intoxicates and murders him, beheading Holofernes with his own sword. Yet for this act, Judith is canonized as a hero to her people. While the suspension of habeas corpus in wartime perhaps justifies the murder of Holofernes, Judith is nevertheless a more ambiguous figure than her canon would suggest.
In an April 5, 2018 interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg apologized for the company's failure to protect user's data, saying, "safety and security is never done, it's an arms race." Sandberg's choice of words evokes weaponry and perpetual warfare in a conversation ostensibly about privacy. Like Judith, Sandberg is positioned as a feminist warrior. Yet revelations about Facebook continue to paint the company, and its executives, in a shadow of doubt.
