Here is an interesting painting of David and Goliath by Andrea del Castagno in about 1450. Italian painters who lived on commissions by churches and the Vatican often sought to paint pictures that were a bit out of the ordinary, as they got bored with painting the same olde Madonna and child pictures. Here’s an example. But a painting of Jonah and the whale— well even the most jaundiced of painters would be licking his chops with all the expansive possibilities, as this painting shows….
The alternative to doing religious paintings in the Renaissance was doing a bunch of portraits, like this one by Botticelli….
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