1.0 INTRODUCTION

In 1495, a year after the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, the two sculptures of Donatello David and Judith and Holofernes were taken from the Medici Palazzo, and installed at the Palazzo Vecchio.1 15th Century Florence was dogged by years of political instability caused by vying foreign ambitions and by feuding Florentine families who sought to control and maintain their power within the republic. One such families who came to dominate were the Medici, and indeed through the Quattrocento, the republic would see them become not only the most influential family but also one of the most important art patrons in Florentine history. The sculptures having once stood at the courtyard and garden of the Medici residence and now moved to the town hall of a new Florentine republic, signifies to us not just the sculptures’ own cultural value but also a clue into what art patronage meant for the Medici.

In this essay, we will look at specifically the narrative device of Donatello’s bronze David, and how the Medici used this sculpture to consolidate the family’s own political narrative and authority.

2.1 DAVID AND THE FLORENTINE REPUBLIC

Before the nude bronze David, Donatello’s marble David had already been on display at the Palazzo Vecchio since 1416, just in front of the priors’ meeting hall.2 The significance of this is that the narrative of David had already underwent something of a transformation, particularly in the public setting. David was often depicted and identified with a scroll, as writer of the Psalms, a prophet and ancestor of Christ.3 Peculiarly, in Donatello’s depiction of David, he is captured in the moment of conquest over the tyrannical Goliath, beardless and youthful. This iconography of David was encouraged by the operai who gave a bonus of 5 florins to Donatello for including the head of Goliath.4 While his youthful appearance was indeed unprecedented, the moment of heroism was clearly desired by the public office, and the reason for which is more than likely an identification with David’s heroism and Florentine patriotism. At the turn of the century, Florentine politics had been mired in internal political upheaval, resulting in the overturning of the tyrannical guild-based government during the Ciompi Revolt in 1382.5 Florence had also experienced a series of engagement with war from foreign enemies, eventually emerging victorious against Milan, Pisa, and Naples.6

David and Goliath as a narrative seems to be used as a device to bolster patriotic sentiments and reinforce Florence’s self-reflexive imagery: that of a city protected by divinity and unconquerable by tyrants and foreign greed. Here, the narrative seems to extol Florentine republican themes: David, who despite all odds in terms of physicality and might, against the giant, was able to amass an attack with a slingshot and slay the enemy of his people. The sculpture seems to evoke Florentine libertas (liberty), and aequalitas (equality) through the divine intervention of God and David, as well as a decisive moment of heroism and victory, where ius (rule of law) prevails.

Having begun as a civic symbol of Florence, the Medici would eventually come to develop the narrative of David to suit their own ambitions; appropriating its nascent and developing cultural symbolism to legitimise their rule and eventual domination in Quattrocento Florence.

2.2 DATING DONATELLO’S BRONZE DAVID

Although the debate of when exactly Donatello’s sculpture was made is ongoing, there appears to be unanimous agreement that the sculpture had likely been commissioned by Cosimo de Medici.7 The earliest account of the sculpture was written dating to the wedding of Lorenzo de Medici and Clarice Orsini of June 1469, after the sculptor’s death in 1466. It was here in this account, that the sculpture was described as being at the centre in the courtyard, with tables and seventy or eighty guests around it.8

Sperling and Janson both agree that the stylistic feature of David resemble closely to Donatello’s bronze putti for the baptismal font of Siena in 1429, estimating that the sculpture must have been made around 1430 before the building of the Medici Palazzo.9 Upon further inspection, Sperling has also suggested that the sculpture was likely commissioned either after or before the return of Cosimo de Medici when he was exiled briefly for a year in 1433- 34.10 Her reasoning for this was that the inscription which accompanied the sculpture bore distinct similarities with the conciliatory poem of Filelfo, who wrote to ingratiate the Medici upon their invitation back to Florence. The sculptural inscription in its last stanza proclaimed ‘Vincite cives’ and Filelfo’s 1434 poem, hypothetically being inspired by the inscription, also concluded with ‘Vincite fortes’.11 Although, it appears that evidence itself is not substantial, entertaining the hypothetical, some comments can be made about the sculpture’s meanings and how it would have been co-opted by Cosimo de Medici to further their public image.

2.3 THE MEDICEAN DAVID

When Cosimo de Medici had been exiled to Venice, the city experienced a bout of political, economic, and social unrest. It was to such a large extent that the Medicis were invited back to put an end to the mounting disarray within the city’s walls. Terry notes that this invitation was not merely grounded in nostalgia for Medici rule, but on superstitious premises.12 After the expulsion of the Medici, the officials were elected on the inauspicious feast of San Giovanni Decollato (29 August), the day their patron saint was decapitated. This was a date which Florentines were reluctant to celebrate, due to the injustice associated with the beheading of their patron saint.13 It was said that the Florentines had felt that the expelling of the Medici family had provoked the patron saint and caused the turmoil that had beset the city since the family’s departure.14 When Cosimo returned, he acknowledged this divine violation and changed all future elections of office away from the feast day of the patron’s martyrdom.

If the sculpture had been commissioned after Cosimo’s exile, the visual language of the sculpture would carry subtly different meanings to those given to the marble David. While Donatello’s marble David extolled Florentine republican principles against foreign enemies with the marble head of Goliath at his feet, the bronze David would have translated these meanings to promote Cosimo’s public image: that without the Medici to defend the Florentine republic, the city would fall into a biblical chaos. The question of when the sculpture had been made becomes particularly important when discussing the work’s political context. One such detail is the Milanese helmet of Goliath,15 which would recall not merely Milan, but also the foreign enemies of Florence, which would be a constant threat to Florence’s sovereignty throughout the Quattrocento. As Crum has suggested, the context can be interpreted in a variety of ways: if we are considering Florence’s attitude towards foreign powers and tyranny, then the helmet could very well reference the battle of Anghiari in 1440,16 or even the lead up to the Treaty of Ferreras in 1428,17 when relations between Milan and Florence were increasingly hostile and tense. Crum also suggests that this could also very well be in reference to the Albizzi coup which lead to the Medici’s exile,18 or the increasingly vocal factions against the Medici rule in the 1450s. Whatever the context must have been, the sculpture was an attempt to legitimise and shed a positive light on the Medici, emphasising the family’s role in Florence’s past triumphs and commitment to republican liberty.

Here, at a more subliminal level, the imagery of David becomes not of the prophet symbolising Florence and its glorious military prowess, but a David distinctly Medicean, a model citizen and defender of his people. At his feet is no longer the marble remains of Goliath, but the destiny of those who try to oppose and usurp the Medici from their rightful place of rule.

2.4 THE PUBLIC SPACE OF THE PALAZZO MEDICI

Whether the sculpture had been commissioned and made before the completion of the Palazzo Medici by the Via Larga around the 1450s,19 its placing within the Palazzo emphasises the public role of both the Palazzo and the art that reside within. Placed at the courtyard, the sculpture would have been visible from outside the Palazzo to passers-by.20 Upon closer examination, the remains of its gilded surfaces particularly in David’s hair would have certainly given the sculpture an eye-catching quality, glimmering in the courtyard.21 Passers-by from the public by the Via Larga, the garden courtyard to the west, and the via de Ginori – would have been able to see this sculpture,22 perched on top of a column. This attests to a particular fact about art within a distinguished Florentine elite’s home: that it is not merely a private quarter for the Medici. Rather, the very building of a Palazzo has connotations of fame, wealth and, most importantly, social status.23

In a distinguished home, it was expected that clients and guests were welcomed and received.24 The home of the Medici was no exception, having been described as ‘always full of citizens’.25 Where business was conducted, face-to-face (a bocca) was preferred and the centre of this was usually the homes of these public figures.26 In a sense the home of the Medici was a carefully manicured social occasion: guests were charmed and entertained, and the entering into a home such as the Medici was a prestigious affair. As Kent describes, the very act of building a Palazzo is itself a demonstration of ‘social exclusiveness and political dominance’.27 For a man such as Cosimo de Medici, the commissioning of art for his home was no superfluous affair.

When the operai had confiscated the bronze David in 1495, they had also taken a sculpture, also made by Donatello, which sat just behind the courtyard in the more private space of the Medici garden. This sculpture was none other than the Judith and Holofernes, and often in literature the two sculptures are paired because they share similar narratives and were either commissioned consecutively after each other, or during the same time, likely during the construction of the Palazzo in the 1450s.28 Like in David, Judith from the Book of Judith, defended her people and slayed a tyrant of a similar calibre as Goliath, Holofernes. Judith is dressed in modest clothing, her robes cascading downwards toward a fallen and contorted Holofernes, as she prepares a second blow for full decapitation.29 Just as Donatello’s David had been gilded, the remains of gilding on her sword today suggest that it had been fully gilded,30 emphasising the drama as well as the visual experience of the sculpture.

Interestingly, Judith as a figure had not been as fully embedded in Florentine imagery and iconography. Likely commissioned after Donatello’s return from Padua in 1453,31 if David had been made prior to the building of the Palazzo, then Judith and Holofernes must have been commissioned to complete Cosimo’s David. Placed at the garden, this sculpture would have been less publicly visible.32 This alludes to a salient point about the social exclusivity of being invited inside the home of the Medici: some artworks are only ever visible if one has been invited and explicitly guided to see these pieces.

The curation of the home delineated into less private and more public spaces, certainly was a strong consideration for the Medici. In the case of Judith and Holofernes, the biblical sculpture has connotations of justice, chastity and humility, values which the Medici wanted to be associated with, partly also to deflect charges of tyranny from themselves. However, the curation of these images and associations seems to be reinforced by the public and private aspects of the Medici Palazzo: the David, an embedded imagery of Florentine civility and liberty at the Palazzo Vecchio,33 appears to be more or less at the centre of their home. While Judith appears to suggest the same themes, David’s more public placement in the courtyard suggests a stronger desire for association: having been more popularised, the Medici saw its narrative as more potent for wider consumption. With this in mind, the bronze David is not merely hinting at the marble David in the Palazzo Vecchio, it also suggests perhaps self- consciously, that this newly built Palazzo holds equal footing to that of Florence’s seat of politics and power.

3.0 CONCLUSION

For the Medici, David was not simply a story of heroism and divine justice, but a narrative device which they curated for both members of the general public and for their elite circles. Choosing their home to display this art object, they manufactured a moral and political association with David, not as a prophet but as a ruler. Donatello’s bronze David is an interesting case study into the Medicean mindset, where their art patronage bespoke not merely of their wealth and power, but also their rather scrupulous and sophisticated attention towards how they were perceived and how they wished to be perceived. At once, the political and personal histories of the Medici seem to intersect with that of an emerging Florentine cult symbol, the biblical David. After the Medici’s expulsion in 1494, David would appear again, albeit as a symbol for ushering in a new republic after the Medici – in the form of none other than Michelangelo’s David.34

FOOTNOTE

1 Allie Terry, “Donatello’s decapitations and the rhetoric of beheading in Medicean Florence”, Renaissance Studies 23, no. 5 (Nov 2009): 609-610.

2 Sarah Blake McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence”, The Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (Mar 2001): 34.

3 McHam, “Donatello”, 34.
4 HW Janson, The Sculpture of Donatello (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 4.

5 Nicholas Scott Baker, “For Reasons of State: Political Executions, Republicanism, and the Medici in Florence, 1480–1560”, Renaissance Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2009): 449.

6 Bonnie A Bennett and David G Wilkens, Donatello (Oxford, UK: Phaidon, 1984), 66.

7 McHam, “Donatello”, 32.
8 Christine M Sperling, “Donatello’s Bronze ‘David’ and the Demands of Medici Politics”, The Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1069 (Apr 1992): 218.

9 Janson, The Sculpture, 35-36; Sperling, “Donatello”, 221.
10 Sperling, “Donatello”, 222-23.
11 Sperling, “Donatello”, 220. 12 Terry, “Donatello”, 616.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Adrian WB Randolph, Engaging symbols: gender, politics, and public art in fifteenth-century Florence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 174.

16 Roger J Crum, “Donatello’s bronze “David” and the question of foreign versus domestic tyranny”, Renaissance studies 10, no. 4 (Dec 1996): 448.

17 Crum, “Donatello”, 443. 18 Crum, “Donatello”, 448.
19 McHam, “Donatello”, 32.
20 Ibid.
21 Randolph, Engaging, 150.
22 Randolph, Engaging, 146.
23 FW Kent, “Palaces, Politics and Society in Fifteenth-Century Florence”, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 2 (1987): 54.

24 Kent, “Palaces”, 58. 25 Kent, “Palaces”, 61.
26 Ibid.
27 Kent, “Palaces”, 54.
28 McHam, “Donatello”, 32. 29 McHam, “Donatello”, 35. 30 Ibid.
31 McHam, “Donatello”, 33.
32 McHam, “Donatello”, 32.
33 McHam, “Donatello”, 34.
34 Crum, “Donatello”, 444.

REFERENCES

Baker, Nicholas S, “For Reasons of State: Political Executions, Republicanism, and the Medici in Florence, 1480–1560”, Renaissance Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2009): 444-478.

Bennett, Bonnie A, and David G Wilkens. Donatello. Oxford, UK: Phaidon, 1984.
Crum, Roger J, “Donatello’s bronze “David” and the question of foreign versus domestic

tyranny”, Renaissance studies 10, no. 4 (Dec 1996): 440-450.
Janson, HW. The Sculpture of Donatello. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Kent, FW, “Palaces, Politics and Society in Fifteenth-Century Florence”, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 2 (1987): 41-70.

McHam, Sarah Blake, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence”, The Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (Mar 2001): 32-47.

Randolph, Adrian WB. Engaging symbols: gender, politics, and public art in fifteenth-century Florence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Terry, Allie, “Donatello’s decapitations and the rhetoric of beheading in Medicean Florence”, Renaissance Studies 23, no. 5 (Nov 2009): 609-638.