David with the Head of Goliath (Caravaggio, Rome)

Uncommon card · No. 166315

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 follower of Giorgione, 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...

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