Bust-length portrait of David, turned to the right, with his head nearly frontal, and his left hand resting on the head of Goliath at the lower right. David has long brown hear and is wearing armour. This is a copy of a picture of which a fragment survives in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum at Brunswick; an engraving of the latter by Hollar is dated 1650. The Brunswick fragment is usually identified as the self-portrait by Giorgione described by Vasari in the Grimani Collection, Venice; that picture was first described in the 1528 inventory of Cardinal Marino Grimani as ‘Ritratto di Zorzon di sua man fatto per David e Golia’ ('Portrait of Giorgione by his own hand, done as a David and Goliath'). The 1528 inventory does not make it clear which head is the self-portrait; Vasari chose the head of David for the woodcut of Giorgione in the 1568 ‘Vite’, and this convention is usually followed. However, if the original was painted towards 1510, when Giorgione would have been in his early thirties, that head seems too young, and considerations of a self-portrait-as-victim tradition also make it likely that Giorgione represented himself as Goliath.

The Royal Collection picture is a good quality copy, which provides useful information about the original work. Although it is usually said to be Netherlandish, c. 1650, it must certainly be earlier and is probably Italian.