Grade 11/12 Art - Day 48 "Michelangelo's Sculptures, Session 3"

Michelangelo's David

Photo source: Stanford University

Too often, we view David from a full-frontal point of view.  However, the art student is well-served to view David from what has been traditionally the right side.  From this angle, which is really the "front", we see the glare that he is throwing at Goliath!

"When we view from the proper angle, we see a very different David.  From Dr. Pietro Antonio Bernabei of the Careggi hospital in Florence and Prof. Massimo Gulisano, an anatomist at Florence University, recently announced that every detail of the sculpture "is consistent with the combined effects of fear, tension and aggression," (Hooper, 2005). According to an interview with Bernabei, everything is "consistent with a young man 'at the moment immediately preceding the slinging of a stone.' His right leg is tensed while the left one juts forward 'like that of a fencer, or even a boxer.' Tension is written all over his face. His eyes are wide open. His nostrils are flared. And the muscles between his eyebrows stand out, exactly as they would if they were tightened by concentration and agression." These features of the sculpture are best appreciated in terms of the long-lost frontal view newly depicted here. The tension of the moment even accounts, according to Bernabei, for "a contraction of the reproductive organs," which has puzzled many observers in the past."

Source: http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/david/David.htm

History

The statue of David was started by a different artist, Agostino di Duccio, in 1463. He picked out a rather narrow piece of stone, which was customary for artists of his denomination. If you are an art expert, you can see from the side that this is not a piece that Michelangelo would have picked. It is too thin.

Source: http://vlsi.colorado.edu/~rbloem/david.html

Agostino only got as far as beginning to shape the legs, feet and the torso, roughing out some drapery and probably gouging a hole between the legs. His association with the project ceased, for reasons unknown, with the death of Donatello in 1466, and ten years later Antonio Rossellino was commissioned to take up where Agostino had left off.

Rossellino's contract was terminated soon thereafter, and the block of marble remained neglected for 25 years, all the while exposed to the elements in the yard of the cathedral workshop. This was of great concern to the Operaauthorities, as such a large piece of marble was not only costly but represented a large amount of labour and difficulty in its transportation to Florence. In 1500, an inventory of the cathedral workshops described the piece as "a certain figure of marble called David, badly blocked out and supine." A year later, documents showed that the Operai were determined to find an artist who could take this large piece of marble and turn it into a finished work of art. They ordered the block of stone, which they called The Giant, "raised on its feet" so that a master experienced in this kind of work might examine it and express an opinion. Though Leonardo da Vinci and others were consulted, it was Michelangelo, only 26 years old, who convinced the Operai that he deserved the commission. On 16 August 1501, Michelangelo was given the official contract to undertake this challenging new task. He began carving the statue early in the morning on 13 September, a month after he was awarded the contract. He would work on the massive statue for more than two years. 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(Michelangelo)

We will now view the Stanford 3D project of David using Scanview! It can be found at:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/software/scanview/ScanView-1.21-Installer.exe