The Triumph of David

The First Book of Samuel tells what happened after David killed Goliath. As the army came home, women came out of all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul, singing and dancing with tambourines, and their song praised David above the king. Saul was jealous of him from that day on. Manfredi paints that homecoming in Rome around 1615. David, in a red cloak with straps crossed over his chest, holds the giant's head by the hair, the wound from David's stone still on its forehead. Beside him a young woman lifts her tambourine high. When the canvas came up at auction in Stockholm in 1989, it was sold as the work of Nicolas Tournier, a French painter who worked in Rome in a very similar style. The Louvre bought it in 1990, and it hangs under Manfredi's name in the Grande Galerie, Room 712.