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EspañolDAVID (MICHELANGELO)
(Redirected from Michelangelo\'s David)
Michelangelo's '''David''', sculpted from 1501 to 1504, is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture and one of Michelangelo's two greatest works of sculpture, along with the ''Pietà''. It is the ''David'' alone that almost certainly holds the title of the most recognizable statue in the history of art. It has become regarded as a symbol both of strength and youthful human beauty. The 5.17 meter (17 ft) marble statue portrays the Biblical King David at the moment that he decides to do battle with Goliath. It came to symbolise the Florentine Republic, an independent city state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states. This interpretation was also encouraged by the original setting of the sculpture outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence. The completed sculpture was unveiled on 8 September 1504.
The history of Michelangelo's David precedes his work on it from 1501-1504, as far back as 1464. At that time the Overseers of the Office of Works of the Duomo (''Operai''), comprised mostly of members of the influential woolen cloth guild, the Arte della Lana, had plans to commission a series of twelve large Old Testament sculptures for the buttresses of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Until then only two had been created independently by Donatello and his assistant, Agostino di Duccio. Eager to continue their project, in 1464 they again contracted Agostino to create a sculpture of David. He only got as far as beginning to shape the legs, feet and chest of the figure, roughing out some drapery and probably gouging a hole between the legs. His association with the project, for reasons unknown, ceased with the death of his master Donatello in 1466, and Antonio Rossellino was commissioned to take up where Agostino had left off.
Rossellino's contract was terminated, soon thereafter, and the block of marble originally from a quarry in Carrara, a town in the Apuan Alps in northern Italy, remained neglected for twenty-five years, all the while exposed to the elements in the yard of the cathedral workshop. This was of great concern to the Operai authorities, as such a large piece of marble was both costly, and represented a large amount of labor and difficulty in its transportation to Florence. In 1500, an inventory of the cathedral workshops described the piece as, "a certain figure of marble called David, badly blocked out and supine." A year later, documents showed that the Operai were determined to find an artist who could take this large piece of marble and turn it into a finished work of art. They ordered the block of stone, which they called ''The Giant'', "raised on its feet" so that a master experienced in this kind of work might examine it and express an opinion. Though Leonardo da Vinci and others were consulted, it was young Michelangelo, only twenty-six years old, who convinced the Operai that he deserved the commission. On August 16 1501, Michelangelo was given the official contract to undertake this challenging new task. He began carving the statue early in the morning on Monday, September 13, a month after he was awarded the contract. He would work on the massive biblical hero for a little more than three years.
Since Michelangelo's ''David'' differs from previous representations of the subject in that David is not depicted with the slain Goliath (as he is in Donatello's and Verrocchio's versions, produced earlier), a common interpretation is that David is depicted before his battle with Goliath. Instead of being shown victorious over a foe much larger than he, David looks tense and ready for combat. His veins bulge out of his lowered right hand and the twist of his body effectively conveys to the viewer the feeling that he is in motion. The statue is meant to show David after he has made the decision to fight Goliath but before the battle has actually taken place. It is a representation of the moment between conscious choice and conscious action. However, other experts (including Giuseppe Andreani, the current director of Accademia Gallery) consider the depiction to represent the moment immediately after battle, as David serenely contemplates his victory.
On January 25 1504, when the sculpture was nearing completion, a committee of Florentine artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli met to decide on an appropriate site for the ''David''. The majority, led by Giuliano da Sangallo and supported by Leonardo and Piero di Cosimo, among others, believed that due to the imperfections in the marble the sculpture should be placed under the roof of the Loggia dei Lanzi on Piazza della Signoria. Only a rather minor view, supported by Botticelli, believed that the sculpture should be situated on or near the cathedral. Eventually the ''David'' was placed in front of the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, also on Piazza della Signoria, replacing Donatello's bronze sculpture of Judith and Holofernes, which embodied a comparable theme of heroic resistance. It took four days to move the statue from Michelangelo's workshop onto the Piazza della Signoria. In 1504, the Florentines added a gilded wreath to his head and a gilt-bronze belt to cover his nudity. At that time the supporting tree stump was also gilded.
To protect it from damage, the sculpture was moved in 1873 to the Accademia Gallery in Florence, where it attracts many visitors. A replica was placed in the Piazza della Signoria in 1910.
In 1991 a vandal attacked the statue with a hammer, damaging the toes of the left foot before being restrained. The samples obtained from that incident allowed scientists to determine that the marble used was obtained from the Fantiscritti quarries in Miseglia, the central of three small valleys in Carrara. The marble in question contains many microscopic holes that cause it to deteriorate faster than other marbles. Because of the marble's degradation, a controversy occurred in 2003, when the statue underwent its first major cleaning since 1843. Some experts opposed the use of water to clean the statue, fearing further deterioration.
Michelangelo's ''David'' is based on the artistic discipline of ''disegno'', which is built on knowledge of the male human form. Under this discipline, sculpture is considered to be the finest form of art because it mimics divine creation. Because Michelangelo adhered to the concepts of ''disegno'', he worked under the premise that the image of ''David'' was already in the block of stone he was working on — in much the same way as the human soul is found within the physical body. It is also an example of the contrapposto style of posing the human figure.
The proportions are not quite true to the human form; the head and upper body are somewhat larger than the proportions of the lower body. While some have suggested that this is of the mannerist style, the most commonly accepted explanation is that the statue was originally intended to be placed on a church façade or high pedestal, and that the proportions would appear correct when the statue was viewed from some distance below.
There was controversy over the statue's supposed Biblical reference, since the statue seemed to portray an uncircumcised male, whereas the historical King David was undoubtedly circumcised. It was also suggested that this was a conscious decision in Michelangelo's endeavor to emulate the ancient Greek aesthetic ideals, which regarded the circumcised penis as mutilated.
A replica of the ''David'' was offered as a gift by the municipality of Florence to the municipality of Jerusalem to mark the 3,000th anniversary of David's conquest of the city. The proposed gift evoked a storm in Jerusalem, where religious factions urged the gift be declined, because the naked figure was considered pornographic. Finally, a compromise was reached and another, fully-clad replica of a different statue was donated instead.
One famous full-sized replica is located at the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California. This magnificent reproduction of David standing in the Movieland courtyard was carved from one piece of flawless Carrara marble taken from Michelangelo's own quarry near Pietrasanta, Italy. It stands 18 feet high, weighs 10 tons and took two years to complete. This reproduction was created by David Sollazzini and Sons, Florence, in 1965, for the Palace of Living Art at the Movieland Wax Museum.
There are many full-size replicas of the statue around the world, from a plaster cast copy at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,[1] to the centerpiece of a shopping mall in Surfers Paradise, Queensland. There is another replica in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. One resident of Los Angeles, California, has decorated his house and grounds with twenty-three reduced scale replicas of the statue. There is a life-size replica at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California. There is a copy gracing the "Appian Way Shops" at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. A bronze casting from the original marble statue stands in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. Another bronze casting is the centerpiece in the courtyard of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a replica, albeit quite a rough one. Another full-size replica can be found in the open air Middelheim Sculpture Museum in Antwerp, Belgium.
Surprisingly there is also a replica placed in Pune, India. It is installed at the Administrative Building of the University of Pune on Aundh Road. It is erected next to a statue of a half naked woman, that seems to depict Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon. That replica is part of the legacy that the British left when India gained its independence.
Even more surprising, there is a full size replica in Davao City, Philippines. It can be found in the same waterfront area as Queensland Lodge, which ironically is a short time motel where couples can get a room for as short as 3 hours. The statue is painted in gold with a fountain at its base and a long narrow 50 meter decorative pool in front of the statue. The area is privately maintained by the owner of Queensland Lodge as a public park, known to locals as Seawall. On Saturday nights, weather permitting, the whole area is filled with hundreds of people drinking from the trunks of their cars with David glowing in the backround. The statue sparked much controversy because of the naked depiction and criticism as a marketing ploy for the lodge. There have also been rumors that the owner plans to build an offshore statue of liberty replica.
In 2007, Märklin produced a Z scale (1:220) bronze replica of David, which stood approximately 1.6 inches (41 mm) tall. The statue accompanied the "museumswagen" for that year, a collector car offered in the Märklin museum in Göppingen to celebrate the German foundry, Strassacker.
★ Pope-Hennessy, John (1996). ''Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture''. London: Phaidon
★ Gardner's Art Through the Ages, , Fred S., Kleiner, Harcourt College, 2001,
★ Stokstad, Marilyn (1999), ''Art History''. 2nd Ed. Vol. 2. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
;General
★ Michelangelo Buonarroti: David, ''Art and the Bible''
;Specific
1. David's Fig Leaf
★ The Digital Michelangelo Project
★ A Goliath's-eye view of David
Michelangelo's '''David''', sculpted from 1501 to 1504, is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture and one of Michelangelo's two greatest works of sculpture, along with the ''Pietà''. It is the ''David'' alone that almost certainly holds the title of the most recognizable statue in the history of art. It has become regarded as a symbol both of strength and youthful human beauty. The 5.17 meter (17 ft) marble statue portrays the Biblical King David at the moment that he decides to do battle with Goliath. It came to symbolise the Florentine Republic, an independent city state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states. This interpretation was also encouraged by the original setting of the sculpture outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence. The completed sculpture was unveiled on 8 September 1504.
| Contents |
| History |
| Style and detail |
| Replicas |
| Notes |
| References |
| External links |
History
The history of Michelangelo's David precedes his work on it from 1501-1504, as far back as 1464. At that time the Overseers of the Office of Works of the Duomo (''Operai''), comprised mostly of members of the influential woolen cloth guild, the Arte della Lana, had plans to commission a series of twelve large Old Testament sculptures for the buttresses of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Until then only two had been created independently by Donatello and his assistant, Agostino di Duccio. Eager to continue their project, in 1464 they again contracted Agostino to create a sculpture of David. He only got as far as beginning to shape the legs, feet and chest of the figure, roughing out some drapery and probably gouging a hole between the legs. His association with the project, for reasons unknown, ceased with the death of his master Donatello in 1466, and Antonio Rossellino was commissioned to take up where Agostino had left off.
Rossellino's contract was terminated, soon thereafter, and the block of marble originally from a quarry in Carrara, a town in the Apuan Alps in northern Italy, remained neglected for twenty-five years, all the while exposed to the elements in the yard of the cathedral workshop. This was of great concern to the Operai authorities, as such a large piece of marble was both costly, and represented a large amount of labor and difficulty in its transportation to Florence. In 1500, an inventory of the cathedral workshops described the piece as, "a certain figure of marble called David, badly blocked out and supine." A year later, documents showed that the Operai were determined to find an artist who could take this large piece of marble and turn it into a finished work of art. They ordered the block of stone, which they called ''The Giant'', "raised on its feet" so that a master experienced in this kind of work might examine it and express an opinion. Though Leonardo da Vinci and others were consulted, it was young Michelangelo, only twenty-six years old, who convinced the Operai that he deserved the commission. On August 16 1501, Michelangelo was given the official contract to undertake this challenging new task. He began carving the statue early in the morning on Monday, September 13, a month after he was awarded the contract. He would work on the massive biblical hero for a little more than three years.
Since Michelangelo's ''David'' differs from previous representations of the subject in that David is not depicted with the slain Goliath (as he is in Donatello's and Verrocchio's versions, produced earlier), a common interpretation is that David is depicted before his battle with Goliath. Instead of being shown victorious over a foe much larger than he, David looks tense and ready for combat. His veins bulge out of his lowered right hand and the twist of his body effectively conveys to the viewer the feeling that he is in motion. The statue is meant to show David after he has made the decision to fight Goliath but before the battle has actually taken place. It is a representation of the moment between conscious choice and conscious action. However, other experts (including Giuseppe Andreani, the current director of Accademia Gallery) consider the depiction to represent the moment immediately after battle, as David serenely contemplates his victory.
Copy standing in the original location of the ''David'', in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
On January 25 1504, when the sculpture was nearing completion, a committee of Florentine artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli met to decide on an appropriate site for the ''David''. The majority, led by Giuliano da Sangallo and supported by Leonardo and Piero di Cosimo, among others, believed that due to the imperfections in the marble the sculpture should be placed under the roof of the Loggia dei Lanzi on Piazza della Signoria. Only a rather minor view, supported by Botticelli, believed that the sculpture should be situated on or near the cathedral. Eventually the ''David'' was placed in front of the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, also on Piazza della Signoria, replacing Donatello's bronze sculpture of Judith and Holofernes, which embodied a comparable theme of heroic resistance. It took four days to move the statue from Michelangelo's workshop onto the Piazza della Signoria. In 1504, the Florentines added a gilded wreath to his head and a gilt-bronze belt to cover his nudity. At that time the supporting tree stump was also gilded.
To protect it from damage, the sculpture was moved in 1873 to the Accademia Gallery in Florence, where it attracts many visitors. A replica was placed in the Piazza della Signoria in 1910.
In 1991 a vandal attacked the statue with a hammer, damaging the toes of the left foot before being restrained. The samples obtained from that incident allowed scientists to determine that the marble used was obtained from the Fantiscritti quarries in Miseglia, the central of three small valleys in Carrara. The marble in question contains many microscopic holes that cause it to deteriorate faster than other marbles. Because of the marble's degradation, a controversy occurred in 2003, when the statue underwent its first major cleaning since 1843. Some experts opposed the use of water to clean the statue, fearing further deterioration.
Style and detail
Michelangelo's ''David'' is based on the artistic discipline of ''disegno'', which is built on knowledge of the male human form. Under this discipline, sculpture is considered to be the finest form of art because it mimics divine creation. Because Michelangelo adhered to the concepts of ''disegno'', he worked under the premise that the image of ''David'' was already in the block of stone he was working on — in much the same way as the human soul is found within the physical body. It is also an example of the contrapposto style of posing the human figure.
The proportions are not quite true to the human form; the head and upper body are somewhat larger than the proportions of the lower body. While some have suggested that this is of the mannerist style, the most commonly accepted explanation is that the statue was originally intended to be placed on a church façade or high pedestal, and that the proportions would appear correct when the statue was viewed from some distance below.
There was controversy over the statue's supposed Biblical reference, since the statue seemed to portray an uncircumcised male, whereas the historical King David was undoubtedly circumcised. It was also suggested that this was a conscious decision in Michelangelo's endeavor to emulate the ancient Greek aesthetic ideals, which regarded the circumcised penis as mutilated.
Replicas
Replica of the statue of David in the Raptis Plaza, Surfers Paradise.
A replica of the ''David'' was offered as a gift by the municipality of Florence to the municipality of Jerusalem to mark the 3,000th anniversary of David's conquest of the city. The proposed gift evoked a storm in Jerusalem, where religious factions urged the gift be declined, because the naked figure was considered pornographic. Finally, a compromise was reached and another, fully-clad replica of a different statue was donated instead.
One famous full-sized replica is located at the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California. This magnificent reproduction of David standing in the Movieland courtyard was carved from one piece of flawless Carrara marble taken from Michelangelo's own quarry near Pietrasanta, Italy. It stands 18 feet high, weighs 10 tons and took two years to complete. This reproduction was created by David Sollazzini and Sons, Florence, in 1965, for the Palace of Living Art at the Movieland Wax Museum.
There are many full-size replicas of the statue around the world, from a plaster cast copy at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,[1] to the centerpiece of a shopping mall in Surfers Paradise, Queensland. There is another replica in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. One resident of Los Angeles, California, has decorated his house and grounds with twenty-three reduced scale replicas of the statue. There is a life-size replica at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California. There is a copy gracing the "Appian Way Shops" at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. A bronze casting from the original marble statue stands in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. Another bronze casting is the centerpiece in the courtyard of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a replica, albeit quite a rough one. Another full-size replica can be found in the open air Middelheim Sculpture Museum in Antwerp, Belgium.
Surprisingly there is also a replica placed in Pune, India. It is installed at the Administrative Building of the University of Pune on Aundh Road. It is erected next to a statue of a half naked woman, that seems to depict Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon. That replica is part of the legacy that the British left when India gained its independence.
Even more surprising, there is a full size replica in Davao City, Philippines. It can be found in the same waterfront area as Queensland Lodge, which ironically is a short time motel where couples can get a room for as short as 3 hours. The statue is painted in gold with a fountain at its base and a long narrow 50 meter decorative pool in front of the statue. The area is privately maintained by the owner of Queensland Lodge as a public park, known to locals as Seawall. On Saturday nights, weather permitting, the whole area is filled with hundreds of people drinking from the trunks of their cars with David glowing in the backround. The statue sparked much controversy because of the naked depiction and criticism as a marketing ploy for the lodge. There have also been rumors that the owner plans to build an offshore statue of liberty replica.
In 2007, Märklin produced a Z scale (1:220) bronze replica of David, which stood approximately 1.6 inches (41 mm) tall. The statue accompanied the "museumswagen" for that year, a collector car offered in the Märklin museum in Göppingen to celebrate the German foundry, Strassacker.
Notes
★ Pope-Hennessy, John (1996). ''Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture''. London: Phaidon
★ Gardner's Art Through the Ages, , Fred S., Kleiner, Harcourt College, 2001,
★ Stokstad, Marilyn (1999), ''Art History''. 2nd Ed. Vol. 2. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
References
;General
★ Michelangelo Buonarroti: David, ''Art and the Bible''
;Specific
1. David's Fig Leaf
External links
★ The Digital Michelangelo Project
★ A Goliath's-eye view of David
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