Week Eight

Michelangelo’s “David” demonstrates Italy’s High Renaissance interests in Humanism and Idealism.  The subject is depicted at the “perfect” age and is given a smooth and flawless healthy body from a clean, pure white marble.  Artists of the time were seeking to make the visual arts a more intellectual craft.  Michelangelo develops an expressive face to show a value in contemplation and intellectualism, which is a switch from the previous depictions of victory where young lads stood tall and proud over a grotesque, decapitated head. Collected and deep in thought, this “David” expressed the Italian’s idea of an admirable, academic Renaissance Man: healthy, attractive, and a clearly physically active intellectual.

Bernini’s “David,” while still utilizing the ideal male form, embodies the shift away from intellectualism to using drama and emotion.  Bernini took the expressive face Michelangelo introduced over a century earlier and added action and motion.  Instead of appreciating an individual and their beauty, the movement of Bernini’s “David” provides a narrative.  This is not David simply existing as David, it is a recognizable biblical character standing next to the armor and weaponry he turned down, concentrating on defeating a giant with his humble shepherding slingshot. Previous “Davids” displayed character or triumph, but this sculpture identifies the story. This works to make David a more believable and relatable personality for viewers to identify with.

Bernini, taking the contrapposto stance further to a more extreme “S,” activates all of his figures muscles, making the noticeable musculature more natural looking.  The clean, fresh-out-of-the-baths whiteness of Michelangelo’s sculpture is exchanged for a grittier, fleckier, yet glossier one. The dirty but shiny arms and legs feign an oily, sweaty man instead of Michelangelo’s powdered man posing with his sling. The heavenly perfection the High Renaissance idealized is not such a priority to Bernini as was effectively describing the scene.

All of these formal elements lead to the Baroque’s favored dynamism. Where the Renaissance produced calm, collected and simple beauty, the Baroque brought action and emotion. Michelangelo sculpted in a culture where the simple, unadorned beauty of a human body was valued.  The differences between his and Bernini’s Davids exhibit the change in the Catholic Church’s and other patrons’ priorities from allowing the appreciation of humanity to understanding and emotionally experiencing the Bible. The addition of details and action in Bernini’s “David” shows us that.

A more blunt expression of the shifting values would be the “subtle” covering of inappropriate body parts. Where Michelangelo would proudly display anatomy (and possibly exaggerate some “idealized” musculature), Bernini included a conveniently located cloth fluttering by, diluting the viewers need to appreciate David’s manliness to the fullest extent, an addition Michelangelo would not have desired on any of his works. Bernini’s work effectively reveals how art moved away from the explicit Humanism from Michelangelo’s time to the more exciting and action-oriented Baroque style.