Caravaggio gave Goliath his own face, the usual answer goes, because he was a condemned man asking for mercy. In May 1606 he had killed a man in a fight in Rome, and the papal courts sentenced him to beheading.
Read this way, the painting was a gift for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the pope's nephew and a keen collector, who could ask his uncle for a pardon. No document proves it.
The sentence amounted to an open bounty: anyone who recognized him could carry it out legally. Caravaggio fled Rome and spent the time he had left in exile, in Naples, Malta and Sicily, then in Naples again.
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The picture, David with the Head of Goliath, is a canvas about four feet tall. A young David holds a severed head by the hair, and the face on that head is said to be the painter's own.
It hangs in Room 8 of the Galleria Borghese, the museum set in the Roman villa the cardinal built for his collection. Its seventeenth-century frame is decorated with leaves, pomegranates and acanthus spirals, the curling leaf pattern of ancient Greek and Roman ornament.
How could a painting plead for a life? In Rome, a pardon came from the pope, and the surest way to reach Paul V was through his nephew. A painting for Scipione's collection was a gift that could open that door.
The trouble is the date. Most scholars place the canvas in 1609 or 1610, in Caravaggio's last months, and others in 1606 or 1607, just after the killing.
A few go back to 1605 or 1606, which could put it before the killing. A face painted before the sentence cannot be a plea against it.
The paper trail starts late too. The first document that places the canvas in the cardinal's collection is a payment for its frame in 1613, three years after Caravaggio's death.
I still find the plea for pardon the most convincing way to explain the face on the head.
Bellori and the self-portrait tradition
The idea that Goliath has Caravaggio's features comes from Giovan Pietro Bellori, a Roman scholar who wrote biographies of the artists of his century…
What You'll Discover
Who posed for David.
What the letters on the blade say.
Who really asked for the painting.
What happened on the road to Rome.