Donatello Casts the Bronze David

1441

The Florentine sculptor produced the first free-standing nude bronze since antiquity: a smooth-limbed boy wearing only a hat and boots, standing on Goliath's severed head. Cosimo de Medici placed it in his palace courtyard. Europe relearned, in an afternoon, that the human body could be sacred without being martyred. The statue's ambiguous sensuality has generated centuries of debate about its symbolism, from civic republicanism to homoerotic celebration.