An ephebic adolescent, whose unripe nudity symbolically hints at humility and courage defeating arrogance and brutal force'. As stated by the Director of Bargello National Museum, Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi: Whatever the underlying meaning the artist and the commissioner wished to convey to the figure, considering the historical circumstances of the time, Donatello here created an absolutely new image of the Bible`s heroic young shepherd and traditional protector of the Florentine Republic. This is today considered the most accurate and reliable theory also due to the apparent significant formal similarities which link the David to other works by Donatello dated between the century`s end of the fourth decade and the beginning of the fifth one. Almost certainly a work of art commissioned by Cosimo il Vecchio meant to adorn that noble spot in the new Medicean Palace (which Michelozzo completed only in 1455), expert art historians have expressed contrasting theories regarding the oeuvre`s chronology placing it from the end of the twenties up to the eve of the artist`s departure to Padova in 1443. The David was referred to, for the first time, as located at the centre of Palazzo Medici`s courtyard in 1469, on the occasion of the wedding ceremony of Lorenzo il Magnifico to Clarice Orsini.

It is undoubtedly the most well known and appreciated work of art by Donatello, but no document or information can provide testimony of its execution. The influence of these scenes on painters in northern Italy was to prove enormous and long lasting.David by Donatello The David, a bronze statue 158 cm high and 51 cm wide at the base, is the first nude sculpture executed in full relief in the history of art after antiquity. Lorenzo in Florence now his major bronze Paduan reliefs present an explosive conception of space with sketchy figures and a very excited continuous surface. Donatello had earlier made remarkable experiments with illusionistic space in his large stucco medallions for the Old Sacristy of S. Anthony, smaller reliefs, and seven life-sized statues in bronze, including a seated Madonna and Child and a bronze Crucifixion. Antonio, decorated with four large narrative reliefs representing the life of St. Another major commission in Padua was the high altar of S. Donatello portrayed Gattamelata as the ideal man of the Renaissance.

It was the first important sculptural repetition of the 2d-century equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. From 1443 to 1453 Donatello was in Padua, where he created the colossal bronze equestrian monument to the Venetian condottiere called Gattamelata in the Piazza del Santo.

David donatello florenz