What is it about?
Following the Jewish reception of the biblical story of Goliath and David as well as the sculptural and pictorial representations of this narrative in the Early Renaissance and in the Early Baroque, the relationship of these two can be read through an erotic lens as the relation of a grown-up man with a beautiful young man.
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Why is it important?
Queer interpretations contribute to the goal of enabling more queer lifestyles today in order to support lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, intersexuals and others who question their sexual orientation or their identification with the sociocultural gender assigned to them. The application of queer studies to biblical studies, Jewish studies, and art history is an innovative undertaking that is unfortunately necessary due to the long and, to a certain extent, still existing homophobic and transphobic traditions associated with biblical texts.
Perspectives
Goliath is not wounded by a stone, as it is described in the first book of Samuel 17, but by the sight of Davidʼs excellent beauty mentioned in 1 Sam 16:12 and 1 Sam 17:42. In the visual arts, Donatello’s possible self-portrait as Goliath initiates a tradition in which a homoerotic artist shows himself as the defeated Goliath and his male beloved as a beautiful and victorious boy. Caravaggio portrays himself in the decapitated head of Goliath in a painting which is currently in the Galleria Borghese in Rome; his assistant and possible lover Francesco Boneri thereby posed perhaps as David. While Donatello models David as an androgynous boy who overwhelms his lover, Caravaggio paints David with a melancholic expression on his face, so that the victory of Caravaggio’s David over his lover is understood at the same time as a heavy loss for the young man.
Dr. phil. Mag. theol. Karin Hügel
research fellow University of Vienna
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Queere Aneignungen von David und Goliat. Künstlerische Selbstporträts als besiegte Knabenliebhaber, December 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004746039_009.
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