David with Goliaths Head

David with Goliath's Head is among the most repeated subjects of Baroque painting, offering a vehicle for depicting a beautiful young man alongside the severed head of a vanquished giant — a composition with charged visual dynamics that was explored by Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, and dozens of their contemporaries. Bernardo Strozzi's 1635 canvas, now at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, treats the subject with his characteristic directness and coloristic warmth. Boijmans Van Beuningen has one of Europe's great collections of Dutch and Flemish Baroque painting, and its Italian holdings include significant works that document the exchange between northern European and Italian painting — an exchange in which Strozzi, who absorbed Rubens's influence, was an important node. David's victory over the Philistine champion was a subject with multiple resonances: the triumph of the small and pious over the powerful, the intervention of God in human combat, and — in its Baroque form — a meditation on the relationship between beauty and violence.

Canvas with Strozzi's warm, rich palette. David's youth and physical beauty are contrasted with Goliath's massive, disembodied head. The head is rendered with the pallor and sagging facial muscles of death. David's armor or simple shepherd's garb is described with Strozzi's pleasure in material texture. The sling or sword as attribute would be depicted with functional specificity.