David
Artist
Michelangelo Buonarroti
(Italian, 1475 - 1564)
Maker
Fonderia Chiurazzi
(Italian, founded 1870)
Dateearly 20th century
MediumBronze
Dimensions198 3/4 in. (504.8 cm)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineBequest of John Ringling, 1936
Object numberSN5466
Fully nude and standing over seventeen feet tall, Michelangelo’s <i>David</i> was a revelation in Renaissance sculpture and remains today the most recognizable statue in the world. The figure’s dimensions, piercing gaze, and tensed musculature were a subject of discussion in the 16th century just as they are now, drawing admirers and detractors alike, all of whom played a part in determining the artistic and psychological significance of such a masterwork. In Florence, the statue became an image of republican fortitude, and in Sarasota, centuries later, it has become a symbol of the city’s identity as an arts capital.
Assuming a familiar <i>contrapposto</i> stance and poised with his humble armaments – a stone and a sling – <i>David</i> was as much a summation of antique and Renaissance sculpture as it was a break with tradition. The pose and treatment of the body are decidedly ancient, filtered through Renaissance sensibilities. But not since the Romans had anyone erected a nude male figure of such colossal proportions, nor with as much attention to human anatomy and interest in accentuated bodily forms. The choice of subject, the biblical David, was not novel either. Sculptors Donatello (ca. 1386-1466) and Verrocchio (ca. 1435-1488) had in the previous century shown the young hero standing victoriously over Goliath’s severed head. Michelangelo however cast David not as a haughty, ephebic prince but as a powerful, muscled young man, choosing to show him in the moments just before the battle. Its artistic qualities and symbolic potential were immediately recognized, and the statue, originally intended for the buttresses high up on the Florence Duomo, was placed instead at the entrance to the political center of the short-lived Florentine Republic (1494-1512), the Palazzo della Signoria. The statue stood there until the late 19th century, when it was removed to its present location in the Galleria dell’Accademia.
By virtue of the prime real estate it occupied and its subsequent glorification by art history (Vasari said it “eclipsed all other statues”), the <i>David</i> was copied extensively. The Ringling <i>David</i>, made in bronze from a cast of the marble original, has been the centerpiece of John Ringling’s Renaissance-inspired art museum since its founding in the late 1920s.
On View
On view
