David

David is a marble statue of the biblical hero by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. One of his early works (1408–1409), it was originally commissioned by the Operai del Duomo, the Overseers of the Office of Works, for the Florence Cathedral and was his most important commission up to that point. In 1416, the Signoria of Florence ordered the statue to be sent to the Palazzo della Signoria (now known as the Palazzo Vecchio), where it held both a religious and political significance. As part of its relocation, Donatello was asked to make adjustments to the David.

Typical of the International Gothic style, the marble piece is noted as not being representative of the approach Donatello had toward his work as he matured. The statue is also clothed, unlike the nearly nude bronze figure of David which Donatello sculpted circa the 1440s. The latter became more widely known than his marble piece; both are now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence.

History

Biblical background

Donatello's statue depicts David in the story of David and Goliath told in 1 Samuel 17 of the biblical Books of Samuel. In the narrative, the Israelites are fighting the Philistines, whose champion – Goliath – repeatedly offers to meet the Israelites' best warrior in single combat to decide the whole battle. None of the trained Israelite soldiers are brave enough to fight the giant Goliath, yet David, a shepherd boy who is too young to be a soldier, accepts the challenge. Saul, the king of Israel, offers David armour and weapons, but the boy is untrained and refuses them. Instead, he goes out with his sling and confronts Goliath before hitting the giant in the head with a stone and knocking him down. He then grabs Goliath's sword and cuts off his head, causing the Philistines to withdraw as agreed, and saving the Israelites. David's special strength comes from God, and the story illustrates the triumph of good over evil. According to Olszewski, David's triumph over Goliath has been interpreted as a "parallel of Christ's triumph" over the devil.

Commission

In 1408, the Operai del Duomo commissioned the statue. At the time, Donatello was twenty-two and had been active in the workshop of Lorenzo Ghiberti. Donatello's earliest known important commission, the marble David statue was to be placed on the tribune of the dome at one of the buttresses on the north side of Florence Cathedral. Nanni di Banco was commissioned to carve a companion piece, a statue of equal size depicting the prophet Isaiah. One or the other of the statues was lifted into place in 1409, but at 6½ feet (just under two metres) high was found to be too small to be easily visible from the ground and was taken down; both statues then languished in the Opera del Duomo, the workshop of the Duomo for several years.

According to Caglioti et al., it is possible that it was Donatello's David raised on the north tribune of the cathedral and removed soon afterward. As the removal occurred on 3 July 1409, it might have been erected on the feast day of John the Baptist (24 June), the patron saint of the city. It is also possible that instead it was di Banco's sculpture of Isaiah that was placed on the tribune.

H. W. Janson, in his monograph on Donatello (1957), made his case that the marble David was indeed the statue commissioned by the Operai del Duomo in 1408 to accompany the Isaiah carved by Nanni di Banco, a point disputed by some historians. On 3 July 1409, the Operai decided to remove the statue of a prophet that had been installed "near the dome", an action later recorded by Italian historian Giovanni Poggi. Therefore, it appears that one of the two statues had actually been placed on the buttress. Because Donatello's David had been completed only three weeks prior, this must have been the Isaiah, and the marble David never left the Cathedral workshop until it was suddenly transferred to the Palazzo della Signoria. Janson never doubted that the Bargello David was the result of the 1408 commission, concluding that the youthful Donatello had miscalculated the visibility of his sculpture when viewed from street level ninety feet (about 27 metres) below.

Manfred Wundram disputes Janson's association of the marble David with the cathedral buttress, pointing out that its surface is extraordinarily refined, to a degree not necessary for a figure placed so high above the street below. He notes also that it lacks the scale, not to mention the exaggerated details and posture needed to be discernible at such a distance, an unlikely omission for an artist so sensitive to the placement of his sculptures and to their relationship with the beholder. For him it is obvious that the sculpture with its fine work was intended to be viewed by a closer audience. Olszewski opines that whether or not it was ever installed in that location is unclear, but in any case it was promptly returned to the Opera del Duomo and replaced by Donatello's Joshua, a colossus in terracotta.

Execution and design

Amy Bloch observes that a number of arguments have been made concerning the manner of the execution of Donatello's marble David. Some authors declare that it was carved circa 1409 and altered by Donatello in 1416, before it was moved to the Palazzo della Signoria. Others, such as Manfred Wundram, argue that it was always intended for placement in the palace. He speculates that Donatello carved the Bargello David particularly for the governmental palace and sculpted the Isaiah around 1409.

The marble piece is a work closely tied to tradition, revealing few signs of the innovative approach to representation that the artist would develop as he matured. Although the positioning of the legs hints at a classical contrapposto, the figure holds a swaying Gothic posture that derives from Ghiberti's influence and is particularly representative of the International Style. Alluding to ancient Greek heroism, the figure wears a crown of amaranth. In antiquity, amaranth was associated with Achilles and represented the "undying memory of heroes".

At its time the statue was considered "as an achievement of great significance", its style reflecting a transition from International Gothic to the early Renaissance, with features that Poeschke referred to as "the slight twist of the body, the challenging level gaze, and the left arm brazenly propped against the hip.……

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「David (Donatello, marble)」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。