While we read the Decameron, fourth day-second story, in class, I could not help but remember this painting by Caravaggio. It wasn’t only because both had a beheading in them, but because in Lisabetta’s agony, I remembered the troubled look of David as he held the beheaded Goliath, in Caravaggio’s likeness. While Caravaggio’s face could not compare to how I imagined Lorenzo’s, I could not help but to imagine this painting as Lisabetta pulled her dead lover’s head out of his unmarked grave. The amount of detail Caravaggio put into David’s slightly feminine face made me feel a similar feeling of agony as well as relief. Similar to the painting, when Lisabetta finds Lorenzo’s body, she feels a sense of agony (because her lover is dead), but she also feels a sense of relief (we can presume) because her vision proved to be true, thus she was not crazy. Instead, Lorenzo actually did come to her in her sleep, and tell her the location of the body. If she had gone to the spot and not found a body, she would have cried in agony and bought a ticket into a medieval mental hospital.

I commend Lisabetta’s and David’s bravery in the situations they were in. David convinced King Saul to let him go face to face with a seven-foot Goliath with nothing but a sling shot that hurled stones, and a shepherd’s staff. David emerged victorious, proving King Saul and everybody watching the “Lord almighty is the only weapon one needs.” Lisabetta, meanwhile, not only stayed calm while her dead lover came and spoke to her in her sleep, but she also had the bravery to go find said lover, and cut his head off, keeping it in a jar long enough to grow a basil plant in the same jar. Although they do not share the same challenge, they certainly share a courageousness to overcome those who defy them.