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David with the Head of Goliath

Creator

Italian Artist · 1603–1647

Sicily's most important painter of the 1600s, Pietro Novelli trained with his father, a painter and mosaicist, then studied painting and perspective in Palermo. Anthony van Dyck's visit to Sicily in 1624 influenced him for life. Van Dyck's altarpiece,still in the oratory of a Palermo church, encouraged Novelli to lighten his palette, a decision that added a sweetness and elegance to his art. Novel

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Date: about 1630s
Medium: Oil on canvas
Culture: Italian
Department: Paintings
Institution: Getty Museum

A muscular young man with a strong profile, who looks fully destined to kill a giant and to reign as Israel's king, this David is no innocent boy with a slingshot. Carelessly cradling Goliath's huge, severed head with one arm and his oversize sword in the other, he gazes off into the future. Pietro Novelli set David against a blank background, pushed his three-quarter-length body up close to the picture plane, and portrayed him as a common man rather than a patrician, following Caravaggio's famous examples. He followed Jusepe de Ribera in using a dark palette, portraying David as an individual rather than a generic common man, and emphasizing the ghastliness of Goliath's head. Novelli probably painted this picture during his time in Naples, where these dramatic contrasts of light and shade were typical.

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