'' David with the Head of Goliath '' is a painting by the Italian

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

artist

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of hi ...

. It is housed in the

Galleria Borghese The Galleria Borghese () is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. At the outset, the gallery building was integrated with its gardens, but nowadays the Villa Borghese gardens are considered a separate tourist ...

, Rome.Catherine Puglisi, ''Caravaggio'' (Phaidon, 1998), p. 360, plate 180 The painting, which was in the collection of Cardinal

Scipione Borghese Scipione Borghese (; 1 September 1577 – 2 October 1633) was an Italian Cardinal, art collector and patron of the arts. A member of the Borghese family, he was the patron of the painter Caravaggio and the artist Bernini. His legacy is the establ ...

in 1650, has been dated as early as 1605 and as late as 1609–1610, with more recent scholars tending towards the former. Caravaggio also treated this subject in a

work Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** Manual labour, physical work done by humans ** House work, housework, or homemaking ** Working animal, an animal tr ...

dated c. 1607 in the

Kunsthistorisches Museum The Kunsthistorisches Museum ( "Museum of Art History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts") is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on the Vienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an octagonal ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, and in an early work dated c. 1600 in the

Prado The Prado Museum ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the ...

in Madrid. The immediate inspiration for Caravaggio was a work by a follower of

Giorgione Giorgione (, , ; born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco; 1477–78 or 1473–74 – 17 September 1510) was an Italian painter of the Venetian school during the High Renaissance, who died in his thirties. He is known for the elusive poetic qualit ...

, c.1510, but Caravaggio captures the drama more effectively by having the head dangling from David's hand and dripped out blood, rather than resting on a ledge. The sword in David's hand carries an abbreviated inscription H-AS OS; this has been interpreted as an abbreviation of the Latin phrase ''humilitas occidit superbiam'' ("humility kills pride"). David is perturbed, "his expression mingling sadness and compassion." The decision to depict him as pensive rather than jubilant creates an unusual psychological bond between him and Goliath. This bond is further complicated by the fact that Caravaggio has depicted himself as Goliath, while the model for David is ''il suo Caravaggino'' ("his own little Caravaggio"). This most plausibly refers to

Cecco del Caravaggio Cecco del Caravaggio (active – mid-1620s), is the notname given to a painter who worked in Rome in the early decades of the 17th century and was an important early follower of Caravaggio (1571–1610). In the past art historians have sugges ...

, the artist's studio assistant in Rome some years previously, recorded as the boy "who lay with him." No independent portraits of Cecco are known, making the identification impossible to verify, but " sexual intimacy between David/model and Goliath/painter seems an inescapable conclusion, however, given that Caravaggio made David's sword appear to project upward, suggestively, between his legs and at an angle that echoes the diagonal linking of the protagonist's gaze to his victim."Catherine Puglisi, ''Caravaggio'' (Phaidon, 1998), p.361, plate 180 Alternatively, based on the portrait of Caravaggio done by Ottavio Leoni, this may be a double self-portrait. The young Caravaggio (his own little Caravaggio) wistfully holds the head of the adult Caravaggio. The wild and riotous behavior of the young Caravaggio essentially had destroyed his life as a mature adult, and he reflects with a familiar hermeticism on his own condition in a painting of a related religious subject. The masterpiece in Rome is a "twin" of a second artwork on the same subject, David and Goliath, as reported in the inventory of the Galleria Borghese dated 1693, where is found that one was located in the first room, and the other in the fourth room. According to his biographer

Bellori Giovanni Pietro Bellori (15 January 1613 – 19 February 1696), also known as Giovan Pietro Bellori or Gian Pietro Bellori, was an Italian painter and antiquarian, but, more famously, a prominent biographer of artists of the 17th century, equiva ...

, the artwork had been commissioned to Caravaggio by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1606, a work that is possibly performed on a double easel, thus generating two twin masterpieces. The biographical interest of the painting adds another layer of meaning to an already complex work, David and Goliath standing for Christ and Satan and the triumph of good over evil in orthodox Christian iconography of the period, and also as the cold-hearted beloved who "kills" and his lover according to contemporary literary conceit. An example of the genre can be seen in the contemporary ''Judith and Holofernes'' of

Cristofano Allori Cristofano Allori (17 October 1577 – 1 April 1621) was an Italian painter of the late Florentine Mannerist school, painting mostly portraits and religious subjects. Allori was born at Florence and received his first lessons in painting from his ...

in the

Pitti Palace The Palazzo Pitti (), in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the presen ...

, where Allori depicts himself as Holofernes,Catherine Puglisi, ''Caravaggio'' (Phaidon, 1998), p.361, plate 181 although Caravaggio has depicted David not as cruel and indifferent but as deeply moved by Goliath's death. If the painting was a gift to Cardinal Borghese, the papal official with the power to grant Caravaggio a pardon for murder, it can also be interpreted as a personal plea for mercy. "''David with the Head of Goliath''

hus Hus or HUS may refer to: Medicine * Hemolytic-uremic syndrome, a disease characterized by haemolytic anemia, kidney problems and a low platelet count People * Hus (surname) * Hus family, an 18th-century French dynasty of ballet dancers and ac ...

demonstrates Caravaggio's gift for distilling his own experiences into an original sacred imagery that transcends the personal to become a searing statement of the human condition."

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:David with the Head Of Goliath 1600s paintings Paintings by Caravaggio Paintings in the Borghese Collection Paintings about death Paintings depicting David Christian art about death Self-portraits

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