Donatello - David

Now everyone knows Michelangelo carved the most famous statue of David in the world, probably the most famous statue in the world, but Donatello also created a fantastically celebrated and rather mysterious sculpture of David which was also done for a Florentine patron as was the David by Michelangelo. This was a private commission for the Medici family. I always remember seeing it just a few years ago when it was being restored at the Bargello Museum where it's housed in the centre of Florence and in a rather undignified way the sculpture had been placed on his tummy and they were restoring it, the fashion is for doing it like that nowadays, they were restoring it in public and there was this lovely lady who was just ever so delicately polishing the David's rather pert bottom, you can't see it in this slide because you're looking at him from the front. I always remember saying to her how does it feel to be restoring Donatello's David, what an amazing thing to be doing and she said see it is I think the most beautiful bottom in the world and it is, it really is, it's the most fantastic sculpture and I think her remarks actually go right to the heart of what makes it such a great sculpture and what makes it such a massively different sculpture from Michelangelo's David which is such a public civic work of art, a David that really does evidently symbolise the Florentine people and their determination to withstand tyranny whereas this image is much more veiled, much more private, I think it's one of the first great homoerotic images. This David has conquered Goliath and perhaps metaphorically he's conquered him in a more than merely military way, he's caught his heart in some sense, he steps on Goliath's head, the severed head and there's a feather that reaches up from Goliath's helmet and it caresses the inner thigh of the boy as if the dead man is caressing the boy after his death. It's an amazing image and it's a very, very mysterious sculpture as I've said and we can't ever I think quite penetrate its mystery but what a beautiful thing.