David and Goliath (verso) (c. 1645): Art, History and Details

David and Goliath (verso) (c. 1645) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Claude Lorrain (French, 1604–1682).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This drawing represents a view of the famous Acqua Acetosa, a mineral spring that until the 19th century provided the favored drinking water of Romans who believed in its healing powers. Although topographically accurate, the sheet is not a plein-air study but a vision of an imagined Arcadian world carefully rendered by Gellée, one of the most original painters of the 17th century. The French-born artist spent his career painting and drawing the Roman Campagna and the Neopolitan coastline. Sublimely beautiful pen-and-ink and wash drawings such as the example here reveal the artist's highly poetic response to the natural world and his unparalleled sensitivity to light.

Object facts

• Title: David and Goliath (verso)
• Date: c. 1645
• Creator attribution: Claude Lorrain (French, 1604–1682)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 26 x 40.5 cm (10 1/4 x 15 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1928.15.b

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward B. Greene

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, Diane DeGrazia, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.