David with the Head of Goliath

For decades nobody could say who had painted this David. In 1914 the art historian Roberto Longhi gave it to Orazio Borgianni, a Roman follower of Caravaggio, later settling for an anonymous Caravaggesque hand. The answer was waiting in the Borghese family accounts. In 1612 Cardinal Scipione Borghese paid for a frame for "the David that Battistello made", meaning the Neapolitan painter Caracciolo, and during recent conservation work the words "Battistello da Napoli" came to light on the back of the canvas. The idea itself is borrowed from Guido Reni's David of about 1605, now in the Louvre, with the boy shown full-length, legs crossed, under a plumed hat. Here the scene sinks into near darkness, and a hard light picks out only the boy's shoulder, the hand resting on the giant's hair, and the wound in Goliath's forehead.