Michelangelo's David

Some have written that when you look into the eyes of David, you are "looking into the eyes of Renaissance Man". All well and good, but the only way you'll be able to do that is if you bring a twenty-foot ladder; David is actually seventeen feet tall and stands atop a six-foot pedestal. 

Originally intended to adorn the roofline of the Duomo, the city fathers later decided to place him - along with Hercules & Cacus - more prominently at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio. Today he stands in the Accademia museum in a Renaissance style dome designed just for him...and the flocks of tourists ogling him! 

Started in 1501 by a twenty-something Michelangelo, David was carved from one solid (though to other artists, flawed) block of Carrara marble and took three years to complete. This 'goliath-sized' statue is arguably the quintessential statement of the power of man and was immediately adopted by the citizenry as the symbol of Florence. Based on the Bible story Davis vs. Goliath, this is obviously no timid shepherd boy but a fully grown man, confident and armed only with a sling and the god-given armor of his body. Art Historians write David is the ultimate symbol of the divine victory of Humanism over the ignorant and evil excesses of the Dark Ages.

Sitting at the foot of David, I did feel a kind of emotional energy emanating out of the stone. It was hard to tell from his stance or his expression just what he might have been thinking. Confidence? Anxiety? A mixed bag of fight or flight? Perhaps only Michelangelo could have told us, but from everything I've read about him that was unlikely. Regarded by most at that time as the ugliest man alive, it's ironic that he could create the epitome of human beauty in David. 

David was a common and inspirational theme back in those days. There are at least two other famous/controversial versions - one by Donatello (1440) and the other by Verrocchio (1475). Both show David as a true boy. Both show him with the head of Goliath at his feet. Donatello's controversial version (naked with funny hat) was the first nude male statue created since Roman times and stood in the Medici's private garden where a 13-year-old Michelangelo had the chance to study it. 

Verrocchio's was commissioned by Lorenzo da Medici (Lorenzo the Magnificent) and popular legend has it that a young Leonardo da Vinci was the model.

The lifelike and sometimes moody realism of all three of these statues set the creative benchmark for many artists that followed.