The Museo del Prado is displaying its magnificent Caravaggio following a restoration that has recovered the original chiaroscuro and previously concealed elements of the composition.

With the collaboration of the Iberdrola Spain Foundation, a Patron of the Museo del Prado’s Conservation Programme, the work—one that exemplifies Caravaggio’s originality—underwent a process to remove oxidised and opaque varnishes from the surface, restoring the painting’s colour range and contrasts.

This intervention, carried out by Almudena Sánchez, conservator at the Museo Nacional del Prado, has restored the work’s original values and revealed compositional elements that had been hidden beneath the varnish’s opacity, such as the clear light surrounding the young David’s head and Goliath’s foreshortened body.

The painting is presented in a new installation in Galleries 7 and 7A, where David García Cueto, Head of the Department of Italian and French Painting before 1800, has devised a panoramic view of the phenomenon of Caravaggism.