David

Around 1620, Domenico Fetti kept coming back to one Old Testament scene: the shepherd boy David standing over the severed head of the giant Goliath, felled by a single stone from a sling. He painted it again and again, and at least five versions survive in his own hand, this full-length one now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice among them. David is still a youth here, more thoughtful than triumphant, the giant's heavy head at his feet. In these years the subject was read as the small and faithful overcoming brute force, and Fetti wraps it in the warm, soft colour he was drawing from Venetian painting. The sword he holds is far too big for him, the blade of the very giant he has just beheaded.