David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio

This is one of Caravaggio's last works. It is a self portrait. 

"But why Caravaggio does not cast himself as the hero David ? Why does he paint himself as the villain of the piece, the monster Goliath? Maybe he hopes that by making this guilty plea in paint he can be spared, perhaps by offering his head in a painting he could save himself in real life. " (Simon Schama) 

To be able to understand this painting we need to go back to the violent past of the artist and his dark genius.

Rome 1603. Images of the Christ, the virgin and the saints are beautiful and pure, created to win the hearts of the faithful. But then Caravaggio starts to paint. He says the glory of the gospel is that the saviour was made of flesh and blood. And he paints Him, and those who were with Him, earthier and more physical than anything that has been seen before. His models are taken from the streets, the taverns, markets and brothels. Caravaggio changes forever the sense of what painting could do, how real it could feel.

Working during the Catholic Counter-Reformation,  Caravaggio pleased many of his religious patrons because he added an approachable human touch to his work. This seemed to fit the Vatican's plan to reinvigorate the Church and combat the Protestant Reformation by reaching as wide an audience as possible.

Caravaggio's personal life, however, was tainted with so much violence that it jeopardized his career. Frequenting seedy taverns and prone to barroom brawls, in 1606 he killed a man in a duel and was forced to flee Rome. Spending the last four years of his life travelling to Naples, Malta, and Sicily, searching for work and ever hopeful of a papal pardon. During this time he produced more introspective and subdued paintings reflecting the psychological toll his lifestyle had taken. Caravaggio was sent to jail several times and had lots of enemies. He used to carry a sword and a dagger without a written permission. 

Only in his thirties when he died prematurely, Caravaggio became the stereotype of the artist as a tormented genius.

Analysing the painting

A young David looks down on the freshly severed head of his enemy. Hardly exhilarated by his triumph, the boy instead looks pensive, suggesting his disgust with the whole enterprise. Holding Goliath by the hair in his left hand and holding his sword in the other, David's pained face and furrowed brow gives the painting an anxious feeling. Perhaps this reflected Caravaggio's personal awareness of what it felt like to kill a man. The large head of Goliath is as a self-portrait. Freshly severed from its body, his head still seems alive with his mouth caught in a scream and his eyes wide open while blood gushes from the neck. The look of anguish is chilling and could easily reflect the inner turmoil of the artist. Is Caravaggio damning himself for his mortal sin or is this a mea culpa meant to elicit sympathy from the papacy that condemned him?

I guess we will never really know what Caravaggio was thinking when painted this magnificent work of art, but I am moved by his pictures, they intrigue me, they touche me. I think I feel what he wanted people to feel when they gazed at his work ... I feel that it is real. 
Even though Caravaggio is not as admired by many like other famous painters, mostly because of his turbulent life, he is one of my favourite artists, his work makes me think, it takes me to places in my imaginary world ...  Maybe it is just because I am a sinner ... like he was ...