David and Goliath

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, c. 1599

Oil on canvas, 110.4 × 91.3 cm

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Room II · Rise to Fame (c. 1598–1600)

David and Goliath, Caravaggio, c. 1599 — Image: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Young David, bent over the fallen giant, ties his hair to lift the freshly severed head. It is the first of three versions of the subject: Caravaggio returned to it in the pictures now in Vienna and in the Galleria Borghese.