Abstract:
Karin Hügel, "Queer Appropriations of David and Goliath: Artistic Self-portraits as Defeated Pederasts".
The Jewish reception of the biblical narrative of David's victory over Goliath offers homoerotic reinterpretations of this story. The relationship between Goliath and David is read through an erotic lens as the relation of a grown-up man with a beautiful young man. The appropriations of David as victor over the pederast Goliath in works of visual art are well-known. The point is that Goliath is not wounded by a stone in these interpretations, as the description in the Hebrew Bible in the first Book of Samuel in chapter 17 implies, but by the sight of David's excellent beauty. Several sculptors and painters from the Early Renaissance to the present time identify with the pederast Goliath: for example, Donatello and Caravaggio.
The Books of Samuel: Stories – History – Reception History, BETL 284, 2016.
Table of contents of The Books of Samuel: Stories – History – Reception History
I gave a lecture on my queer appropriations of David and Goliath at the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense LXIII at the Catholic University of Leuven on July 31, 2014.
Donatello's bronze David, ca. 1440, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.
Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath, 1609/1610, Galleria Borghese, Rome.
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