David with the Head of Goliath (1610)

With one of Caravaggio's final installments, the themes he's been working at his whole life come together.

Ambiguous Thought: We asked it with Boy Peeling Fruit, and every painting afterward: what's on the character's mind?  No matter who Caravaggio paints, their faces just seem to suggest more than what we see.  This question is brought to a head (pun very much intended) with David's expression as he gazes on the slain Goliath.  Looking at other depictions of David (by Michelangelo a century before, Orazio Gentileschi within decades, and even Caravaggio himself earlier in his career), the mood is exuberant.  A boy of youth and vigor holding aloft his prize.  But here there is pity written across David's face.  And he does not seem like a boy.  Though youthful in frame, his expression and the deep shadows cutting across his face produce the illusion of age.  And this makes sense, because a few years before Caravaggio made David with the Head of Goliath, he himself had committed murder.  There's an understanding of the complex emotions that result from the taking of a life in this painting.  Things get more complicated when one considers that this is a self portrait.

Brutal Honesty: Honest depiction of the world can be seen in Bowl of Fruit.  Honest depiction of character can also be viewed in The Calling of Saint Mathew.  In this latest painting, Caravaggio is brutally honest about himself.  The boy, David, is him.  The model he used was very likely Cecco del Caravaggio, his studio assistant from his time in Rome who was born in the painter's home town (Gash, 2003).  These connections to his own past suggest strongly that Caravaggio wanted to cast himself as the boy.  But we know from other self-portraits what he looked like as a man, and he clearly painted his present self as Goliath.  The struggle then becomes between an innocent spirit and a wretched, experience old man.  As Simon Schama puts it, this is "art without any vision of consolation."  Caravaggio strips away any suggestion of redemption for himself, or for his audience.  In order to defeat the vile monster he has become (one so ashamed that even in death his eyes are cast downwards), his innocent side must cut away the evil, and in doing so (we see clearly from David's expression) become tainted by it.  There is no victory, only honesty.