![]() The work was unusual: not only was it a private commission (for the most powerful man in Florence, Cosimo de' Medici), but its intended location in a villa courtyard meant it was designed to be seen from all the way around. "The gods give support to the brave fighters for their fatherland against even the most fearsome enemies," reads a Latin inscription beneath the sculpture.ĭonatello's return to the subject of David in the late 1430s resulted in the first freestanding nude sculpture since antiquity. Against the odds, the small city state had overcome aggressors from neighbouring territories. Removed from the church, David was no longer just a religious character, but became an allegorical figure for another underdog: Florence. Sculpture at this time was always architectural, so when it was decided that Donatello's marble David would not stand on a buttress of Florence's cathedral as originally intended, but instead in the City Hall, a new role for statues as popular and political was etched in art history. Donatello's sculpture "adds a psychological sensitivity" and demonstrates the artist's "understanding of the human psyche" and "innate ability to capture a moment". "Although idealised, the young hero has a sense of the individual," Peta Motture, lead curator for the V&A's Donatello exhibition, tells BBC Culture. If we admire the boy's beauty, it is due in part to the unusual humanity in Donatello's work. The marble David's lifelike, shapely body and slightly twisted contrapposto pose marked a departure from the rigidity of medieval sculpture and was an early sign that, with Donatello's groundbreaking mastery of this challenging medium, the Renaissance mission to revive the knowledge and beauty of classical antiquity was on the right path. ![]() With the recent opening of Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance at London's V&A, the masterpiece comes to the UK for the first time, joining a copy of Donatello's second and better-known David, cast in bronze 30 years later, and part of the museum's permanent collection. The figure of David first won hearts in Florence in 1408 when Donatello di Niccolo di Betto Bardi, barely more than a boy himself, sculpted in marble a youthful and victorious David with Goliath's severed head at his feet. Italy's finest sculptors − Donatello, Verrocchio, Michelangelo and Bernini − all broke the mould with their Davids, while painters such as Guillaume Courtois, Rubens, Reni, and Caravaggio created emotive masterpieces of him in oil.ĭescribed in the Bible as having "beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance", his dramatic story and good looks made him the perfect muse. The humble shepherd boy who slayed the Philistines' most formidable warrior, the giant Goliath, and was later crowned king of Israel, has been the subject of some of art history's most iconic works. His fame was such that he was forever known simply as "David". He was just a boy, but he came to epitomise male beauty.
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