David Holding Goliath's Head

1610 · Private collection

mythological

This composition recalls the celebrated precedent by Caravaggio. It uses Caravaggio's canvas in the Borghese Gallery as its starting-point: the young Biblical hero is shown half-length, holding the enormous sword (almost a sabre) with which he had severed the head of the giant Goliath, which he holds up in his left hand, grasping it by the hair. Vermiglio has aimed for a restrained level of drama, putting the accent on decorum.

About the Artist

Giuseppe Vermiglio

1585 – 1635

Italian Caravaggist painter, active in northern Italy and Rome. He spent the first two decades of the seventeenth century in Rome where he trained and worked as an artist. In 1605 he was arrested and imprisoned after being discovered at the Monte di Brianza hostelry bearing an unlicensed sword; and in 1611 proceedings were brought against him for physically attacking the painter Silvio Oliviero. In 1618, still in Rome, he is recorded as a picture dealer. Around 1620 he returned to northern Italy where he pursued his career as a painter in Piedmont (Novara and Alessandria) and in Lombardy (in Mantua and Milan). Beside Caravaggio, he was also influenced by the Bolognese painters Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni.

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