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David with the Head of Goliath

Caravaggio

1605

oil

canvas

From the collection of Borghese Collection

Baroque Early Baroque Italian Baroque Portrait Religious Beheaded Head David David With the Head of Goliath Sword

Dominant colour

About this work

This painting shows a young man holding a sword in his right hand, with his left hand grasping the hair of a severed head. The young man is shirtless, wearing a white cloth draped over his shoulder and tied around his waist, and brown pants. The background is dark, with a hint of light coming from the left side. The young man's facial expression is calm and determined, while the severed head appears to be in a state of shock or pain. The sword is held at an angle, with the blade pointing downwards. The overall mood of the painting is one of intensity and drama. The use of chiaroscuro, a technique that uses strong contrasts of light and dark to create a sense of volume and depth, adds to the dramatic effect of the painting. Look up Caravaggio to learn more.

The story of this work

Overview

David with the Head of Goliath is a painting by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio. It is housed in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. The painting, which was in the collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese 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 an oil on poplar wood panel dated to c. 1607, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and in an earlier oil on canvas dated to c. 1600 in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. The immediate inspiration for Caravaggio was a work by a…

Source: wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

References in popular culture

The Netflix limited series, Ripley, features this painting when the protagonist visits the Galleria Borghese shortly after committing a murder. Symbol for the song "Euclid" on Sleep Token's album Take Me Back to Eden (2023). A character masked with the band's logo holds singer Vessel's head. The painting is described and discussed by characters in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. The English patient endorses the theory that the painting is a double self-portrait, and states that the "true sadness in the picture" is the "judging of one's own mortality."

Read the full account in the museum source.

Source: wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.