David and Goliath

A few years before he began this ceiling, Michelangelo had finished a marble David in Florence, a giant standing figure set up in 1504 in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. That statue is usually read as the moment before the fight, the young man still sizing up his enemy. Here, in a corner of the vault at the entrance end of the chapel, he paints the end of it.

The stone from the sling has already done its work. Goliath lies face down, and David straddles his back with the giant's own sword raised over his head, as in the First Book of Samuel, which says that David took Goliath's sword and cut off his head with it. The corner is a curved triangle, and the two unequal bodies are pressed into it.

This is one of the four corner scenes of the deliverance of Israel, painted in the first campaign. In the other corner at the same end of the chapel is Judith, so both scenes nearest the door show an enemy losing his head.