Is Michelangelo’s David a Political Work of Art? By India Gray

Is Michelangelo’s David a Political Work of Art?

Michelangelo’s David (1501-1504)1 depicts the biblical figure David from Old Testament (I Samuel 17), a teenaged Israelite who takes on the Philistine giant, Goliath, threatening his people. Using intelligence and the favour of God, David defeats Goliath with a slingshot and stone, killing him and then beheading him.2 David appears in a pose borrowed from classical antiquity ‘contrapposto’ where his weight looks balanced and make him seem dynamic and lifelike.3 David is fantastically proportioned 1 2

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Victoria & Albert, The story of Michelangelo’s David, https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-michelangelos-david (accessed 25/05/21) Bible Gateway, 1 Samuel 17 New International Version (NIV), https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%2017&version=NIV (accessed 25/05/21) Empty Easel, What is “Contrapposto” in Art? Here’s an Explanation of Classical Contrapposto,

https://emptyeasel.com/2007/12/18/what-is-contrapposto-in-art-heres-an-explanation-of-classical-contrapposto/ (accessed 25/05/21)

(with the exception of a slightly enlarged hand and head to take into account perspective of the viewer).4 The sculpture is highly detailed, including veins of varying prominence (including a swollen jugular vein), both tensed and relaxed muscles and an expressive, furrowed brow.

Unlike previous sculptural depictions of David (e.g., Donatello c.1440s & Verrocchio 1473-75), Michelangelo’s shows David in the moments leading up to the battle with Goliath rather than after his victory. In both Donatello and Verrocchio’s sculptures as well as countless other depictions of David, the hero appears with decapitated head.5 By removing immediately recognisable features of David, he made the figure seem less specific and allowed it to be metaphorized.6 The Opera del Duomo (Works of the Cathedral) commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to sculpt this piece as one of many proposed decorative statues of Old Testament figures to feature on Duomo di Firenze (Florence Cathedral), 40ft above street level.7 Once David was completed and unveiled to the committee, however, it became clear that this statue was too perfect to have up so high and far away from the viewer;8 moreover the weight of the 60 ton, 17ft marble statue was unlikely to be supported by the cathedral.9 It was decided that the statue would stand outside the centre of the Florentine local government, the Piazza della Signora.10 The new placement of the statue was likely very influenced by the politics of the time. Italy as the country we know today did not yet exist; it was rather a patchwork of, larger, rival city states that remained ununified until the 19th century. Florence had to contend with both the threat of its neighbours and political forces withing the city. Until they were exile in 1494, the de facto authority of Florence was a powerful family called the House of Medici.11 Then a friar called Savonarola set about establishing a theocratic state. (He was executed in 1498.)

Believing that Florence had gone astray due to wealth – and art was considered a product of that wealth – he held so-called ‘bonfires of the vanities’, in which items considered to be sinful (including art) were destroyed.12 The story of David and Goliath felt allegorical to the struggle of the Republic of Florence at the time; Florence took pride in classical renaissance values of humanism, holding great esteem for intellectualism and rationality, to defeat a brutish and overpowering enemy.

In his book The Lives of the Great Architects, Painters and Sculptors of Italy (1550), Giorgio Vasari states that Michelangelo used David as an example; as he defended his people and governed them with justice, so might those who governed the city defend it courageously and govern it with justice.13 The piece was clearly interpreted by Michelangelo’s contemporaries as a political work. There is some damage to the statue caused by stones being thrown at it on 4

Gill, A. (2002), My, what big hands you have https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2002/aug/08/guardianweekly.guardianweekly1 (accessed 25/05/21) Love, I. (2020), David: A Comparison of 5 Sculptures https://www.thecollector.com/david-sculptures-comparison/ (accessed 25/05/21) Great Art Explained, (2020), Michelangelo’s David: Great Art Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e16DmKH01s&list=PLWpyPWGrTJOe1WS6CmolaBPL703rf7kED&index=5 (accessed 25/05/21) 7 Smarthistory, (2020), Michelangelo’s David and the Florentine Republic, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdlP8ai8trw&list=PLWpyPWGrTJOe1WS6CmolaBPL703rf7kED&index=4&t=15s (accessed 25/05/21) 8 Accademia.org Guide to the Accademia Gallery in Florence, (2018), Michelangelo’s David, https://www.accademia.org/explore-museum/artworks/michelangelos-david/ (accessed 25/05/21) 9 The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, How a Rejected Block of Marble Became the World’s Most Famous Statue, https://www.britannica.com/story/how-a-rejected-block-of-marble-became-the-worlds-most-famous-statue#:~:text=A%20statue%20of%20David%2C%20the,had%20been% 20ordered%20in%201464.&text=In%201504%2C%20as%20Michelangelo%20finished,the%20roofline%20of%20the%20cathedral. (Accessed 25/05/21) 10 Accademia.org Guide to the Accademia Gallery in Florence, (2018), Michelangelo’s David, https://www.accademia.org/explore-museum/artworks/michelangelos-david/ (accessed 25/05/21) 11 History.com Editors, (2019), The Medici Family), https://www.history.com/topics/renaissance/medici-family (accessed 25/05/21) 12 Cavendish, R. (1998), Execution of Girolamo Savonarola, https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/execution-girolamo-savonarola (accessed 25/05/21) 13 Coonin, V. (2016), Encountering the Renaissance, How the Giant of Florence Became Michelangelo’s David https://www.academia.edu/25281003/How_the_Giant_of_Florence_Became_Michelangelos_David#:~:text=Michelangelo's%20original%20contract%20of%2016,figure%2 0called%20the%20giant%2C%E2%80%9D%20confirming (accessed 25/05/21) 5 6

its installation outside the Piazza della Signora. This is attributed to Medici loyalists opposed to the reconstituted republic.14 The changing of the location of David, reframed the work into a different context – and so what was originally intended as a religious work of art is repurposed into a political symbol for the new Republic of Florence.

This works well with the theory first explored in Levine’s The Location of Michelangelo’s David: The Meeting of January 25, 1504. (1974). The hypothesis follows that David’s intense gaze captured in marble (before he slaughters the giant) is facing towards the enemy: Rome.15 After the exile of the Medici in 1494, the family formed an allyship16 with the Papal states and Pope Alexander VI. Alexander was a member of the corrupt Borgia family. He engaged in nepotism and, until his death, in 1503, seized land and titles from other Italian families.17 Together, the Medici and the Pope posed a sizable threat to Florence’s independence.

It may have been the case, however, that Michelangelo himself was not involved in the politicisation of David in this way. Michelangelo’s other, likely more credible contemporary biographer, Ascanio Condivi, wrote mainly in praise of the aesthetic quality and technical skills of Michelangelo’s work in Vita di Michelangelo (1553). Coonin suggests this points to an exaggeration of Michelangelo’s intentions behind David within academic texts.18 In an unpaginated preface to Vita di Michelangelo, Condivi alluded to Vasari’s lack of knowledge and unreliability: ‘Because certain persons who wrote about this great man without knowing him as intimately as I do, partly related events that had never occurred and partly omitted such as would be very much worthwhile noting’.19 In conclusion, through no intention of Michelangelo, David became a political work – and remains a political work today. In 2010, the Italian State brought a legal case against the City of Florence, claiming ownership of David was implied by the Unification.20 This is perhaps the fate of all art, aesthetically perfect or not, to exist within whatever social and political context it is viewed from.

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Boyle, J. (2004), How Michelangelo’s David hit 500 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3634730.stm (accessed 25/05/21) Levine, S. (1974), ‘The Location of Michelangelo’s David: The Meeting of January 25, 1504’, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 56, No.1 (Mar. 1974) pp. 39 Levine, S. (1974), ‘The Location of Michelangelo’s David: The Meeting of January 25, 1504’, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 56, No.1 (Mar. 1974) pp. 34 17 Lee, A. (2013), Were the Borgia Really so Bad? https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/were-borgias-really-so-bad (accessed 25/05/21) 18 Coonin, V. (2016), ‘How the Giant of Florence Became Michelangelo’s David’, Encountering the Renaissance, https://www.academia.edu/25281003/How_the_Giant_of_Florence_Became_Michelangelos_David#:~:text=Michelangelo's%20original%20contract%20of%2016,figure%2 0called%20the%20giant%2C%E2%80%9D%20confirming pp. 115-124 (accessed 25/05/21) 19 Pon, L. (1996), ‘Michelangelo’s Lives: Sixteenth-Century Books by Vasari, Condivi and Others’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 27, No.4 (Winter 196), pp.1020 20 Povoledo, E. (2010), The New York Times Florence Journal, Who Owns Michelangelo’s ‘David’? https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/world/europe/01david.html?searchResultPosition=8 http://www.michelangelo.net/david/ (accessed 25/05/21) 15 16

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