David Slaying Goliath

c. 1520

Ugo da Carpi

Artist, Italian, c. 1480 - 1532

A boy raises an oversized sword high over a man who has fallen face down as others fight in a landscape in this horizontal woodblock print. The scene is printed with three blocks, two in shades of olive green and the third in black. The cream-white of the paper creates the highlights. The boy kneels with one knee pressed between the shoulders of the fallen man. The boy wears a toga and lifts the sword with both hands. Much larger than the boy, the muscular man reaches one hand forward, the fingers raised. Beyond this pair and to the left, some men kneel with their hands held up and together toward others who hurl stones or a lance at soldiers to the right. A man carries a fluttering banner in front of tents in the background in the rightmost quarter of the image, and another armored man runs away from the action, toward us and to our right along the right edge of the sheet. There are trees and hills in the background under bands of clouds in the sky. An inscription was carved out of the bottom center of the pale olive-green block so white text reads, “RAPHAEL VRBINAS. P. VGO DACARPO.”

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    chiaroscuro woodcut (3 blocks)

  • Credit Line

    Gift of David Keppel

  • Dimensions

    sheet: 27.1 × 38.8 cm (10 11/16 × 15 1/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1943.12.6

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Bartsch, no. 8, State ii/iii


Artwork history & notes

Exhibition History

2020

  • Raphael and His Circle: Prints and Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2020, no cat.

Bibliography

1802

  • Bartsch, Adam. Le peintre graveur. 21 vols. Vienna, 1802-1821: Adam. Le peintre graveur. 21 vols. Vienna: J.V. Degen, 1802-1821.

Wikidata ID

Q65026316


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