Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
ADJUNCT MODULE A: ITALIAN ART
Preferred Title:
David
Image View:
Detail, lower body and head of Goliath
Creator:
Andrea del Verrocchio (Italian sculptor, 1435-1488)
Location:
repository: Museo Nazionale del Bargello (Florence, Tuscany, Italy)
Location Note:
Via del Proconsolo, 4
GPS:
43.770423 11.257947
Date:
1473-1475 (creation)
Cultural Context:
Italian
Style Period:
Renaissance
Work Type 1:
sculpture (visual work)
Classification:
sculpture
Material:
bronze
Technique:
casting (process)
Measurements:
126 cm (height)
Description:
A free-standing bronze commissioned by the Medici family. The David offered Verrocchio the chance to challenge Donatello’s celebrated bronze of the same subject (also in the Bargello). Verrocchio’s invocation both of the Classical models that influenced Donatello and of Donatello’s David itself is evident in the dignified countenance of his frontal figure, standing in a contrappostal pose, his left arm on his waist. However, more concrete and accurate, it represents a totally novel approach. Instead of showing, as had Donatello, a heroic nude embodying general ideals of beauty, grace and youth, he portrayed a given young hero whose tight leather tunic reveals a bony but taut torso. Depicting a dramatic moment, he thus replaced Donatello’s languorous and passive figure with an audacious conqueror, with a trace of a supercilious smile. (Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordart online.com/)
Collection:
Adjunct Module A: Italian Art
Identifier:
7A1-VERR-MB-D-A05
Rights:
© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.

David