Analysis of Michelangelo’s David
On
the Wednesday of our third week here, I went to the Accademia Gallery. The
Accademia is the institution that houses the world-renowned statue of
Michelangelo’s David and has done so since 1873.
Michelangelo
was commissioned by the Florence Cathedral building committee to carve a civic
statue out of the marble left over from a previously abandoned commission. This
came shortly after the death of Lorenzo the Great in 1492 and the political
upheaval that ensued. Out of this came a power shift from the Medici’s to the
Florentine Republic and to ‘shore up its legitimacy’,
they commissioned several civic monuments that would serve as aesthetically
pleasing pieces of art but also propaganda. The choice of David was not
surprising as he had long been an inspirational hero to the Florentines. The
white marble statue was carved in between 1501-1504 and was originally placed
in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. The biblical figure stands tall at
17 ft and weighs approximately 6 tonnes.
Michelangelo’s
David is first and foremost an embodiment of his fascination with the human
form, much like another Renaissance figure held high in esteem – Leonardo Da
Vinci. His close study of such meant that the statue is in keeping with what
was an ongoing progression of naturalism and perfection of the human form
during the Renaissance. Furthermore, he can be argued to seemingly mimic the
status of men in the 16th century in ‘representations of
Machiavellian Masculinity’
because with naturalism you portray not only the physical truths but
socio-economic truths of the time, too. As I have already discussed this in
part was crafted for propaganda purposes. Therefore, the messages that are
trying to be put across are that of a strong David, akin to the strong
Florentine male and the Florence Republic who together have conquered Florence.
This version strayed from the previous depictions by Donatello and Verrocchio
in that he is not shown after the battle with Goliath’s head at his feet, but
before the battle waiting for Goliath to approach. The fact that David’s
expression is so easily readable proves Michelangelo’s expertise in the
naturalism of expression.
The
statue had certainly been influenced by the Renaissance tendency to imitate statues
of classical antiquity, particularly the ‘Contrapposto’ pose that was
distinctively classical for the Florentines. However the 16th
century perception of what classical art consisted of was sometimes wrong, a
prime example being the imitation of the ‘blank’ eyes. These were not stylistic
features of sculptures in ancient Greece and Rome, it was simply a result of
the paint fading – they were all initially in colour. Furthermore, Michelangelo
is claimed to have admired the Greco-Roman statues particularly for ‘the
skilful and precise rendering of the heroic physique’,
of which the influence is obvious. Conversely, Kleinder asserts that there was
another influence, the influence of Hellenistic statues: ‘David is
compositionally and emotionally connected to an unseen presence beyond the
statue, a feature also in Hellenistic sculpture’.
In
conclusion, despite the varying periodical influences and the progression of
Renaissance styles, Michelangelo’s David was clearly in a league of its own. As
in the eyes of Michelangelo’s contemporary Giorgio Vasari, it was held up as an
unsurpassable masterpiece: ‘without any
doubt the figure has put in the shade every other statue, ancient or modern,
Greek or Roman’.
