David with the Head of Goliathc. 1450/1455

This shield-shaped painting shows a young man with pale, peachy skin and curling brown hair standing astride the severed head of a man with dark hair and tanned skin. The painting is wider at the top and tapers like a pint glass to a narrower base. The young man, David, holds the end of long red slingshot with his right hand. The slingshot is weighted by a rock and swings behind his body. His sleeveless rust-red garment is cinched at his waist over a long white shirt. Both garments skim David’s thighs and his legs and feet are bare. Long, curling brown hair frames the ashen and bloodied upturned face of the head at David’s feet. A palm-sized stone is embedded in that forehead. The landscape background is made up of gray boulders, a meandering river, and low palm-like trees. Frothy white clouds sweep across an azure-blue sky.

Description from the National Gallery of Art.

Andrea del Castagno painted this in about 1450/1455, aged about 31. It is now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

How it was made

Tempera

Pigment bound with egg yolk. It dries in minutes and can’t be blended wet, so painters built up form with fine, hatched strokes. It was Europe’s main panel technique before oil.