King David

The words on the stone slab come from a psalm. In Latin they read, glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. David was believed to have written the psalms, and the city is Jerusalem, whose temple only his son Solomon would build. Guercino shows the king between youth and old age, a crown on his turban, ermine over his shoulders, the sceptre loose in his hand as he looks down at the words. In 1651 Giuseppe Locatelli of Cesena, a town in Romagna, ordered the picture together with a sibyl, since Christians counted David and the sibyls among those who had foretold Christ. The pair hung side by side for centuries, in Cesena and then at Spencer House in London. The king arrived here in 2025, 13 years after his sibyl, and they hang together again in Room 32.