Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Copyright page / Peter Scott Brown -- Acknowledgements / Peter Scott Brown -- List of Illustrations / Peter Scott Brown -- Introduction / Peter Scott Brown -- The Riddle of Jael / Peter Scott Brown -- Jael under Erasure / Peter Scott Brown -- Jael in Medieval and Early Modern Art and Thought / Peter Scott Brown -- Transformations of Jael (1400-1550) / Peter Scott Brown -- Jan van Eyck and the Early Modern Re-imagination of Jael / Peter Scott Brown -- Albrecht Altdorfer's Jael, the Power of Women, and Syphilis in Sixteenth-Century Print / Peter Scott Brown -- Lambert Lombard's Jael, Poxied Penitents, and Northern Humanism / Peter Scott Brown -- Jael among the Haarlem Humanists (1550-1600) / Peter Scott Brown -- Maarten van Heemskerck and Dirck Coornhert's Power of Women: A Pasquinade on the Perfectibility of the Imperfect Soul / Peter Scott Brown -- Maarten van Heemskerck and Hendrick Goltzius on Jael's Nail and the Artist's Hand / Peter Scott Brown -- Philips Galle and Hadrianus Junius' Jael: A Biblical Circe and Her Eloquent Riddle / Peter Scott Brown -- Epilogue / Peter Scott Brown.

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In The Riddle of Jael , Peter Scott Brown offers the first history of the Biblical heroine Jael in medieval and Renaissance art. Jael, who betrayed and killed the tyrant Sisera in the Book of Judges by hammering a tent peg through his brain as he slept under her care, was a blessed murderess and an especially fertile moral paradox in the art of the early modern period. Jael's representations offer insights into key religious, intellectual, and social developments in late medieval and early modern society. They reflect the influence on art of exegesis, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, humanism and moral philosophy, misogyny and the battle of the sexes, the emergence of syphilis, and the Renaissance ideal of the artist.