On a recent trip to Rome, I visited the Galleria Borghese where I stood for several minutes admiring Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath (1609/10). It is an impressive painting. David, young and lean, but not overly muscular, holds his enemy’s head away from his body with his left hand, his facial expression more meditative than triumphant. In his other hand he holds Goliath’s sword, which he has used against his dead foe. Blood flows from Goliath’s neck, suggesting his decapitation has only just occurred, his fixed final facial expression is of shock and surprise, in contrast to the dispassion of his conqueror. This is a picture that portrays victory in combat not exultantly but with nuance and sympathy.
Caravaggio had painted this scene at least twice previously: there is a version from 1606/07, now in Vienna, similar in construction, with David’s upper body once again half-covered by a thin white shirt, although in this version the different position of his right arm (which is almost invisible in the Rome painting), holding the sword behind his head, draws our gaze away from Goliath. I think the Roman version has a stronger compositional structure. Another version of the scene, from 1598/99, now in Madrid, shows the moment at which David severs the head from the body. Goliath’s face, in the bottom right corner, is less expressive than in the later paintings, but David’s face is partially obscured by shadow: it is almost as if Goliath’s head has fallen from David’s body. All three paintings remind us of Caravaggio’s innovative and virtuosic use of light and shadow in his construction of the scene, and his delight in the portrayal of young male flesh. Beyond his technical mastery, he also interprets the story for us, the victory of the young, unknown Israeli shepherd boy over the giant Philistine warrior.
The following day, in the Palazzo Barberini, I saw another decapitation scene by Caravaggio, in this case Judith beheading Holofernes (1599). While his portrayal of Holofernes, at his moment of death, and of Judith’s servant, steeling herself for the gruesome task, are both impressive, his Judith seems oddly detached from the task at hand, as if she were playing a tricky harpsicord solo rather than murdering her enemy. I much prefer the versions by Artemesia Gentileschi, painted shortly after Caravaggio’s death, one of which is now in Naples and the other – the better, I think – in Florence. I enjoy her use of primary colours – the intense red, blue, and yellow of the three protagonist’s clothes – and the messy tangle of six arms at the centre of the picture, as the victim tries to fight-off his two assailants. I also admire the way she captures the intensity of concentration of the women at their moment of success, as the blood spurts from Holofernes’s neck all over the white sheets.
These paintings, both brilliant and bloody, celebrate the triumph of the underdog. The Philistine army had been threatening the people of Israel. Their king, Saul, was too scared to engage in personal combat with the mighty Goliath, reported at the time to be four cubits and a span (which equates to around 2.06 metres tall, or 6 foot 9 inches for those readers stuck in imperial measures). Along came the young David, trained to protect the flocks of sheep in his care from attack by lions and bears, who defeated Goliath with one accurate stone from his slingshot. On Saul’s death, David become king himself. At a later time, when Israel was threatened by an Assyrian army, Judith, a widow, managed to insinuate herself into the enemy camp and befriend Holofernes, the Assyrian general. One evening, as he slept off a bout of heavy drinking, she slipped into his tent with her servant, took up his sword, and beheaded him. Once again, the nation of Israel had been saved by an act of bravery by someone who appeared to be the weaker party in the fight.
On my bookshelves I have two Bibles: one is a modern translation from the late-1970s, from the Protestant tradition, called the New International Version; the other more traditional version dates from the mid-1960s and comes from the Catholic tradition, called the Revised Standard Version. The Book of Judith is printed in the Catholic version – after Tobit and before Esther – but does not appear in the Protestant version. Both the Greek and Roman Christian traditions accept the story of Judith as part of their Scriptural canon, but neither the Jews nor the Protestants include it, both considering it to be apocryphal. Rather than constituting an essential contribution to the meaning of their religion, the Jews and the Protestants consider the story of Judith to be made-up: it is a parable that reveals a moral truth, but it is neither historically accurate or theologically reliable.
Most Jewish and Christian denominations agree on the historical and theological validity of the story of David, which is reported in the 17th chapter of the 1st Book of Samuel. However, observant readers will note that in the 21st chapter of the 2nd Book of Samuel, we are told that Elhahnan, son of Jaare-Oregim, killed a warrior named Goliath. Some scholars believe that when the history books of what we now know as the Old Testament were edited together (perhaps by Ezra, who lived around 400 years BCE), differing source materials were aggregated together into one supposedly definitive text. The editor(s), it is supposed, tried to provide a consistent, chronological account of Israel’s early history, but in various places retained contradictory information. Some go as far as to suggest that Elhahnan was the real killer of Goliath, but that later this story was re-told placing David in the heroic role in order to establish for posterity David’s credentials to become king. In other words, for propaganda purposes, in order to legitimise and celebrate a great period of Israel’s history, the story of one man’s bravery in battle was taken from him and re-written as if it were in fact the act of their most famous king. This sounds like the sort of thing that might have been done in the Soviet Union in Stalin’s era; or today in North Korea (and some other places too).
It is precisely the scepticism that many of us have regarding the veracity of these Biblical stories, that makes them such fertile subjects for great works of art. Rather than treat them as “true history”, they can be reinterpreted to tell other, different stories. They are ancient parables that can be refashioned into modern parables. In the Roman version of Caravaggio’s painting, he used his own image for the face of Goliath. This picture is, then, a self-portrait: not of the artist as warrior hero, but the artist as fallen legend. After a lifetime of convictions for brawling and disorder, in 1606 Caravaggio had been found guilty of the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni, and sentenced in his absence to beheading. He had already fled Rome, and lived the last four years of his life in Naples, Malta, and Sicily. Some historians think his third version of the David picture, gifted to Cardinal Borghese, a nephew of the Pope, was part of a deal to secure his pardon, but he died in 1610, on his way to Rome, before the sentence was formally commuted. Caravaggio used the myth of David and Goliath to present himself as the victim, a great man brought low by the slingshot accusations of younger upstarts.
For Artemesia, the story of Judith provided the perfect opportunity for her to take revenge. Her father, Orazio, also a famous artist, encouraged his daughter’s evident skill in painting. But, when she was a teenager, she was raped by Agostino Tassi, another artist and close friend of her father’s, who was supposed to be tutoring her. Orazio initially covered up the crime, hoping that Tassi would marry his daughter, but when it became clear that no wedding was imminent, he brought charges against his friend. Artemesia left Rome for Florence and, later, Naples, where she developed her own successful career, eclipsing the achievements of her father and his friends, becoming one of the greatest of Baroque painters. In her versions of Judith beheading Holofernes, painted only two to three years after her sexual assault, she used Tassi as the model for the Assyrian general and herself as the model for the Jewish heroine. Through her art, she turned the tables on her attacker, asserting her power and his defeat. I imagine she took great satisfaction depicting his blood, spilt by her wielding his sword, soiling his bed-linen.
Borrowing mythic stories from our distant past and repurposing them to tell a different story for today is not a stratagem limited to famous painters. Great writers have also found value in this approach, notably James Joyce’s reworking of Homer’s epic poetry and Thomas Mann’s retelling of the story of Joseph and his brothers, originally found in the book of Genesis, in the Old Testament. While this seems a perfectly reasonable approach in the creative arts, it is far less admirable in contemporary politics, when national leaders try to cloak their policies and actions by reference to the dubious reinterpretation of stories from their nation’s past as, for example, President Putin likes to do when justifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In these cases, creative reinterpretation quickly degenerates into self-justificatory propaganda.
Today, there is another war in Gaza, an ancient city that was once, around three thousand years ago, one of five cities that formed the pentapolis known at Philistia, home to the Philistines. Goliath himself might have been a Gaza resident. Benjamin Netanyahu likes to portray Israel as the plucky underdog fighting for survival against the odds, and no doubt would like to see himself as David, the brave warrior stepping up to slay his nation’s foes, despite the cowardice of the international community in this regard. But this is not a legitimate reinterpretation of an ancient story: it is the abandonment of fact and moral reasoning. The ancient history of Israel is not a good guide to modern politics, and nor does it provide licence for the massacre of innocents.
Myths can be fruitfully repurposed, but when their meanings are reversed their truth is lost. Adam did not encourage the snake to eat the apple. Noah did not build a swimming pool. Samson did not cut Delilah’s hair. And, Benjamin Netanyahu is not innocent of genocide.