David and Goliath (Daniele da Volterra)

David and Goliath or David Killing Goliath is a double-sided oil on slate painting by Italian mannerist painter Daniele da Volterra, created c. 1555. It is held in the Louvre, in Paris. Both sides show the same scene.

History

A commission from Italian author Giovanni Della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, it uses the composition from a drawing by Michelangelo, Volterra's friend and teacher.^[1] It shows Volterra engaging with the contemporaneous debate on whether painting or sculpture was the superior art form; being double-sided allowed the work to compete with sculpture. He produced a clay maquette for the work and chose a very large and flat piece of slate. The slate broke during the process of painting, and was repaired with two barely-visible tenons.^{[citation needed]}

The work belonged to Annibale Rucellai [it] after the death of Giovanni Della Casa, and was offered nearly two centuries later to Louis XIV on 31 July 1715 as a Michelangelo.^[2] It was restored at the Louvre in 2007, repairing rain damage from a storm which broke the glass ceiling at the Château de Fontainebleau.^{[citation needed]}

References

^ da Volterra, Daniele (1555). "David vainqueur de Goliath". Paris: Louvre. Accession: INV 566. Retrieved 20 May 2025.
^ da Volterra, Daniele (1555). "David tuant Goliath" [David Kills Goliath]. POP : la plateforme ouverte du patrimoine (in French). Paris: Ministère de la Culture. Retrieved 20 May 2025.

[louvre-1] Volterra, Daniele (1555). "David vainqueur de Goliath". Paris: Louvre. Accession: INV 566. Retrieved 20 May 2025.

[pop-2] Volterra, Daniele (1555). "David tuant Goliath" [David Kills Goliath]. POP : la plateforme ouverte du patrimoine (in French). Paris: Ministère de la Culture. Retrieved 20 May 2025.

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