Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, 'David and Jonathan (?)', about 1505-10

Two young men stroll through the Italian countryside, one of them – rather startlingly – carrying a giant head. He is David; the head is from his defeated enemy, Goliath. The other man is probably David’s friend Jonathan, son of Saul, King of the Israelites.

According to the Old Testament, David was left behind to mind the sheep when his older brothers went to join the Israelite army in battle against the Philistines. One day, taking food to his brothers, he heard the Philistines‘ great champion Goliath challenging any Israelite to single combat. None of them except David dared to volunteer, even though Saul was offering his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who succeeded. Refusing to be given conventional armour, he killed Goliath with a stone flung from his sling – you can see the empty sling hanging on his belt – and then cut off the giant’s head with his own sword. Here, David carries the blade over his shoulder. After this David was made commander of Saul’s armies and Jonathan became his friend. However, the King soon became jealous of the attention given to David, and tried to kill him with a spear, perhaps the one Jonathan carries in this painting.

We are not really sure who or what this small painting was made for. David’s story was very popular at the time: it was an exciting tale – as can be seen in Pesellino’s The Story of David and Goliath – but David was also understood as a forerunner and ancestor of Christ. David and Jonathan together is a rare subject, and the composition here is comparable with that traditionally used for depicting Tobias and the Angel, as in Andrea del Verrocchio’s painting of the pair, or Cima da Conegliano’s own version of about 1514–15 (now in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice). It is as if the artist was asked to paint something unusual, and so adapted a composition from a different story.

The rolling sunlit countryside dotted with medieval towns and villages is characteristic of Cima, and appears in other paintings by him such as The Virgin and Child. Richly contrasting colours – red next to green, blue next to yellow – are also very typical of Cima, and can also be seen in The Incredulity of Saint Thomas. The style of the panel suggests it was painted at around the same time as Saint Jerome in a Landscape.

The artist has used various tricks to create an illusion of depth. The road and the river converge, leading our eyes towards a single vanishing point, a technique known as linear perspective. This is combined with aerial perspective, where objects become more indistinct with distance and far off hills appear blue even though we know they are green.

The scale of the painting is similar to some of Cima’s small mythological panels, such as his Silenus and the Satyrs (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and little paintings of Saint Jerome. Presumably this painting, like those, was made for private enjoyment.