In 1748, the talented young sculptor Ignazio Collino, from Turin in Piedmont, received a fellowship to go to Rome, in order to study the art of classical antiquity, which he copied in drawings and terracotta reductions. The present statue of Judith with the Head of Holofernes is Collino's earliest known work of his own invention. When it was sent to Turin in 1750, it immediately caused great admiration and praise. In fact it laid the foundation for the artist's later fame, as Collino would become the domineering sculptor active in Piedmont during the second half of the 18th century. His work was collected by patrons as distant as the Russian Tsar. Judith's solemn and heroic pose receives an unusual twist thanks to her head being turned upwards--a familiar sign of divine inspiration, which in this case legitimizes and glorifies her act of defense of Israel from the Babylonian invader.