Andrea del Castagno

Florentine, before 1419 - 1457

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Italian painter

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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.
Andrea del Castagno, David with the Head of Goliath, c. 1450/1455, tempera on leather on wood, Widener Collection, 1942.9.8

David with the Head of Goliath

Andrea del Castagno · c. 1450/1455 · tempera on leather on wood ·  Accession ID  1942.9.8

The head, shoulders, and chest of a man wearing a deep rose-red garment fills this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled slightly to our left, and he looks directly at us from the corners of his eyes. His brown hair falls across his forehead, sweeps down over his ears, and curls gently at the nape of his neck. His eyebrows arch over brown eyes, and he has a long, angular nose. His upper lip is full, and his mouth is closed. He has high cheekbones and a cleft in his chin. The high collar is a black band over the voluminous red garment, which falls in pleats or folds down his chest. His right hand, on our left, lifts to clutch the fabric near his chest, in the lower left corner of the painting, and he wears a gold ring on his pinky finger. The background behind the man fades from dark aquamarine blue across the top to pale arctic blue at his shoulders, which span the width of the composition.
Andrea del Castagno, Portrait of a Man, c. 1450, tempera on panel, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.17

Portrait of a Man

Andrea del Castagno · c. 1450 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1937.1.17

Bibliography

1936

  • Salmi, Mario. Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castago, Domenico Veneziano. Rome, 1936. 2nd ed. Milan, 1938.

1943

  • Richter, George M. Andrea del Castago. Chicago, 1943.

1957

  • Fortuna, Alberto. Andrea del Castagno. Florence, 1957.

1966

  • Hartt, Frederick. "Andrea del Castagno: Three Disputed Dates." The Art Bulletin 48 (1966): 228-234.

1967

  • Bellosi, Luciano. "Intorno ad Andrea del Castagno." Paragone 18, no. 211 (September 1967): 3-18.

1980

  • Horster, Maria. Andrea del Castago. Oxford, 1980.

1992

  • Bellosi, Luciano. In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker Edited by Günther Meissner. 83+ vols, Munich and Leipzig, 1983+: 2:983-988.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 2.