David (Bernini)

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David

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1623-1624

This article is about the sculpture David by Bernini. For other sculptures, see David (disambiguation)

Bernini's David (1623-24) is a life-size marble sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Collected by Bernini's main patron Cardinal Scipione Borghese, it is now in the Galleria Borghese.

1 Style
2 Sources
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] Style

Compared to prior sculptural representations of David, this represents a stunningly novel^[1], revolutionary interpretation. Like Bernini's near contemporary statue of Apollo and Daphne, this work is paradigmatic of the sculptors' Baroque style: stressing unsettled dynamism and emotion over classic placidness. These qualities distinguish this David from the well-known, almost iconic representations by past Florentine masters: the serenely confident high-Renaissance David by Michelangelo, the haughty effeteness of the post-battle bronze or marble Davids by Donatello^[2], or the Quattrocento version by Verrocchio.

Unlike the vertical emphasis of earlier statues, Bernini's sculpture coils in his original plinth^[3], hunched and poised to release his rock. Bernini's David develops the kinetic energy required to kill Goliath; however, in a metaphorical sense, it represents a conceit that confronts a sculptor trying to encapsulate this moment: the challenge of making rigid stone convey movement.

Unlike the placid serenity of prior statues, the furrowed forehead and granite grimace of this David underscore Bernini's interest in displaying emotion in sculpture. Bernini does not epitomize a numinous ideal warrior, but an individual soldier, struggling to achieve his goal. Below David are discarded armor, underscoring that this is not a story about a victory gained by superior weaponry, but one gained by a straining physical effort. The disguised harp at his feet recalls that David, while depicted as a warrior, will become a poet (that is, an artist) in his own right.

Unlike prior sculptures, Bernini's David is not a boy, he appears to be the eldest representation of all the Italian sculptures mentioned above; however he is the depiction of a man about to change his life and history. Donatello's David, for example, is already victorious, and stands heroic and self-confident. In political terms, it was an apt metaphor for a Florentine republic (if not an artist) that saw itself (or himself) as the artistic apogee of Italy. Bernini's David, on the other hand, exudes a Counter-Reformation combativeness, and perhaps the feistiness of a young sculptor clawing upwards to pre-eminence not only among his fellow sculptors, but also attempting to culminate a history of Renaissance sculpture.

[edit] Sources

Avery, Charles, and David Finn, Bernini: Genius of the Baroque, A Bullfinch Press Book, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1997
Post, Chandler Rathfon, A History of European and American Sculpture From the Earliest Christian Period to the Present Day, Volume II, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1921
Wittkower, Rudolph, Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque, Phaidon Press, London, 1997