David et Goliath

Titian made this around 1542 for the ceiling of a church on a small Venetian island, Santo Spirito in Isola, so it was never meant to be seen at eye level. Look at how David and the dead giant are pitched steeply upward, the bodies shortened and tilted as if you were standing beneath them on the chapel floor. It is the young shepherd's moment just after the fight. David kneels almost in prayer over Goliath's severed head while a shaft of stormy light breaks over him. When the island's religious order was dissolved in the 1650s, the paintings were carried across the water and reset into the sacristy ceiling of Santa Maria della Salute, where they still hang.