Few viewers expect to find the biblical giant-slayer in the early work of Edgar Degas, a painter so closely linked to ballet and the modern city. Yet in 1864, the young artist submitted David and Goliath to the Salon, entering the fierce arena of Parisian academic painting with a subject as old as Western art itself. The painting stands out as one of Degas’s rare forays into grand historical narrative, a genre he would soon abandon for scenes of everyday life.

Its very existence surprises: Degas, who would later say "No art was ever less spontaneous than mine," here tackles a moment of explosive violence and faith. The canvas captures the instant after David’s sling has found its mark. Goliath, immense and armored, collapses in the foreground, his sword slipping from slack fingers. David, still a youth, stands taut and alert, his gaze fixed not on his fallen foe but on the horizon—perhaps the Philistine army, or the future that awaits him.

The light isolates David, casting him in a pale glow that contrasts with the shadowed bulk of Goliath, emphasizing the victory of spirit over brute strength. Where Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath dwells on aftermath and remorse, Degas chooses the climax, all tension and motion, the chainmail and leather rendered with a care for texture that betrays his academic training. Little is known about the subsequent journey of David and Goliath. The painting’s medium is not clearly recorded, and it remains one of Degas’s least exhibited works, rarely seen outside specialist studies of his early career.

Scholars note that it marks a transitional moment: painted just before Degas left for Italy, where he would immerse himself in the Old Masters and begin to reshape his style. Today, the work is seldom on public view, its whereabouts sometimes uncertain, but it stands as a testament to the ambitions and restlessness of the young Degas, poised between tradition and the radical new vision he would soon pursue.