David and Goliath, after Raphael

The composition derives from one of Raphael’s frescoes in the vaults of the Vatican Logge, although it may depend immediately upon a drawn version by one of his pupils. Bartsch and Passavant praise the engraving as one of Raimondi’s “most considerable”, its pictorial effects especially coherent, at the same time its line unusually fluent, thus predicting the next stage in the development of reproductive engraving. Impressions like this one, before the addition of Raimondi’s signature tablet were according to Bartsch, already “extremely rare”.