Donatello’s innovation in depicting David, Kenneth Clark informs us ( The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form , 54), captures the spirit of Renaissance: He transforms “the king of Israel into a young Greek god.” Both adjectives are critical: young and Greek:
In the middle ages “the image of David more familiar in medieval art was an old man, bearded and crowned, playing on the harp or on a chime of bells; and although the young David was not unknown in the Middle Ages, it was by a prodigious leap of the imagination that Donatello saw him as a god of antiquity. Strictly speaking, he is not Apollo but a young Dionysos, with dreamy smile and flexible pose; and the Goliath head at his feet is simply the old satyr head often found at the base of Dionysiac statues.”
Whatever the inspiration make Donatello’s David “a work of almost incredible originality, which nothing else in the art of the time leads us to anticipate.”
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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