Private collection, Milan

V. Sgarbi, Il Male. Esercizi di pittura crudele, exh. cat. Palazzina Stupingi, Turin, 2005, p. 328, no. 69.

David with the Head of Goliath derives from an episode recounted in the Old Testament, specifically 1 Samuel 17:49–54; 18:4, 6–7. In the battle between the Israelites and the Philistines, the young shepherd boy David volunteered for a one-on-one fight with the Philistines’ leader, a giant called Goliath. David felled his seemingly unbeatable adversary by slinging a stone that struck the giant on the forehead, and he then used Goliath’s own sword to decapitate him. 

Assereto depicts David following his moment of victory, when he delivered the severed head to Jerusalem, where he was received by joyous Israelite women. That the work depicts the moment of David’s triumphant reception in the city is underscored by the classical loggias visible at the right of the canvas. David holds Goliath’s head by the hair with his left hand while the sword he used to slay the giant slashes across the bottom edge of the composition. The young victor is shown fresh from battle, his chest bare, a swathe of brilliantly blood red draped over his shoulder and around his waist. Considered a direct ancestor and precursor of Christ, David is aptly presented here in his triumph of good over evil, the theme that lies at the heart of the Christian poem.

There are no known variants or replicas of the present composition by Assereto. It is close in style to the Portrait of a Gentleman of the Grillo Family now in the collections of the National Museum of Warsaw, dated by scholars to about 1640. Stylistically it can also be compared to the personification of Autumn in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole (inv. 247), with which it shares the essentials of its palette and the attention focused on the nude figure, defined with soft brushstrokes beneath a veil of judicious shading. This work is also dated to the very first years of the 1640s, which seems likewise appropriate to the present canvas. Thus, David with the Head of Goliath can be considered a mature work by Assereto.

This work is accompanied by an expertise by Anna Orlando.