What Is the Statue of David in Art History

 (Published September 5, 2004)

September 8, 2004 marked the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo's David, i of fine art-history's greatest masterpieces. Crowds of visitors have been drawn to Florence to experience this magnificent sculpture over the by 500 years--and they keep to visit in record numbers. Why does a work of art created half a millennium agone possess such a timeless, universal appeal? What pregnant does this 500-year-old sculpture hold for modernistic-24-hour interval human being?

To answer these questions, consider the significance of Michelangelo's David to the Renaissance Florentines who first revered it.

During the 1000 years preceding the Renaissance, the West had been mired in the medieval Christian worldview, which divided the universe into two spheres: a heavenly realm of perfection, happiness and truth, and this dark world of imperfection, misery and falsehood. Man, forever paying for his criminal offense of Original Sin, was regarded every bit powerless and ignorant, with blind obedience to God and his earthly spokesmen as his just recourse.

As expressed by one of the leading Christians of the time, Saint Augustine , man is "crooked and sordid, bespotted and ulcerous." Consequently, man as depicted in medieval fine art is a deformed beast, wailing for the salvation of his soul. At best, the homo ideal was represented as a bloody, beaten and crucified Jesus Christ; a homo who resigned himself to his preordained fate: a vehement, sacrificial death.

The Renaissance was the rebirth of human being'southward life on earth. Freed from the shackles of potency, man's mind was viewed as able to sympathise the universe. Far from being a tortured soul trapped in a deformed bodily prison, man was regarded as rational, beautiful and heroic--worthy of happiness and capable of dandy accomplishment. Human, in the Renaissance view, need not bow downward in passive resignation, praying for conservancy. He can choose to undertake great challenges in the face of seemingly impossible odds; he tin actively pursue success, fight for victory--even slay a giant.

Michelangelo's David is the all-time expression of this Renaissance sense of life. The sculpture was inspired by the story of the immature shepherd boy who chose to fight a far stronger antagonist in lodge to save his people from invasion. Wearing no armor, with a sling every bit his only weapon, David defeats Goliath using superior skill and courage.

Although in that location had been many earlier portrayals of David in art, Michelangelo'due south was revolutionary. The others describe David after the boxing had been won--often standing on the severed head of a defeated Goliath. Michelangelo chose to show David not in victory, but at that point in time that prefigured victory: in that instance between conscious option and conscious action, that moment when an individual makes a choice--and commits to act on that pick. David stands, with furrowed brow, looking over his left shoulder into the distance for Goliath. Michelangelo shows David not equally a triumphant victor, simply as a thinking, resolute beingness--the preconditions for victory.

The key to the David's appeal is Michelangelo's magnificent projection of man at his best--vigorously good for you, beautiful, rational, competent. It expresses a heroic view of homo and of a universe auspicious to his success. Such a project is of immeasurable worth to anyone who holds such a sense of life--whether that person lived 500 years agone or lives today.

Unfortunately, this kind of creative projection has most entirely been relegated to the past.

Today intellectuals once again view man equally an ugly, corrupt being, trapped in an incomprehensible universe and not in control of his own destiny.  Consequently, man and his values are not considered a serious subject for art by Modernists; "serious art" contains the defecations of an elephant or the rusty steel of a garbage dump.

Michelangelo'southward David thoroughly rejects both the Christian and Modernist conceptions of human being. The David projects man as neither a monster nor a hapless victim, but equally an efficacious and noble being. The David is the ultimate projection of heroic choice and heroic activeness.

What is the meaning of Michelangelo's David for modern-day man?  The same as it was 500 years ago--the brilliant project of the platonic.

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Source: http://sandstead.com/essays/david.html

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