The Davids of Michelangelo & Donatello

Donatello's bronze David (c. 1430) and Michelangelo's marble David (1504) are, nominally, treatments of the same subject. Yet -- considering the fact that both drew on the same iconographic tradition, were made within seventy-five years of each other, were created in Florence and credited with political meanings, and were important landmarks in the influence of classical art on the Renaissance -- it would be difficult to imagine two sculptures that were more different. A comparison of these two works will demonstrate how the sculptors made iconographic choices suited to the functions of their statues and how each man took a different approach to the integration of the antique into his style.

The differences in the two Davids stem, in part, from the fact that Donatello (1386-1466) was the premier sculptor of the first phase of the Florentine Renaissance, defined roughly as the period from 1400 to the mid-1440s, and, as such, was a pioneer in the introduction of classical style and concepts into contemporary art. Michelangelo (1475-1564), on the other hand, was a leading painter and architect as well as the dominant sculptor of the High Renaissance, a period that began around the turn of the sixteenth century, when "artists continued the most original trends of the fifteenth century, arriving at new solutions" to problems posed nearly a century ago (Adams 121). Other contrasts between the two Davids derive from variations in the conditions of their production. Donatello

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Donatello's statue would seem inappropriate for an ordinary citizen, which Cosimo claimed to be, and would not have been ostentatiously displayed because "the commissioning of life-size bronze statues for a private palace could certainly invite the criticism of vainglory" (Gombrich 41). But such a work would also symbolize the growing culture of the family -- which was eager to disguise its unaristocratic roots -- because of its evocation of the classical past. The presentation of a major Biblical personage, and prefiguration of Christ, in a form that resembled "more Eros or Narcissus than the biblical hero" might show the learned classicism of the patron and the artist but it is also an artistic strategy that was very new at the time and might have proved offensive to many people (Godfrey 110). In addition, of course, the "iconographical ambiguity" of the statue extended to its homoerotic qualities (Becherucci 435). Donatello's presentation of David as a pretty young boy is clearly warranted by the description in 1 Samuel. He is shown entirely naked except for sandals and leggings that reach to his knees and a hat. He is, as Godfrey says, "a serenely pastoral boy with his long locks [and] garlanded shepherd's hat" (110).

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