Trio of Davids

I’m on a roll (see previous posts). No need to identify this fellow. For starters, there’s a recent and excellent article by Sam Anderson on David, which appeared in an August, 2016 edition of the New York Times Magazine. Wonderful piece. In Donatello’s marble David the eyes are merely incised into the face, giving the statue a sort of blank and empty stare. What a contrast with Michelangelo, who places they eyes in deep sockets with furrowed brows. He filed out the pupils, leaving a tiny wedge shape hanging, like a gleam. This statue is really looking, and really thinking. While Michelangelo learned much from Donatello (Donatello died when Michelangelo was about ten years old; it’s not impossible that they may have met–the little boy and the old master) he also went beyond him, enlivening stone to degrees not seen since the ancient Greeks carved their masterpieces.