David and Goliath

The David and Goliath in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, was painted at the beginning of the artist's career, while he was a member of the household of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte. It shows the Biblical David as a young boy picking up the head of the giant Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, by the hair. The light only illuminates David's leg, arm and flank, Goliath’s massive torso from which his head has been severed, and the giant’s head itself, but everything else is dark. Originally Goliath's face was fixed in wild-eyed open-mouthed terror, tongue rolling and eyeballs swivelled to the edges of the sockets, but Caravaggio later changed this to a less dramatic motif. Caravaggio also painted two other paintings of this theme - one is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and in the second in Rome's Galleria Borghese.