Donatello: Civic Humanism and Republican Culture in Florence

DONATELLO: CIVIC HUMANISM AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE IN FLORENCE

Robert Baldwin

Associate Professor of Art History

ConnecticutCollege

New London, CT06320

(This essay was written in 1993 and has been revised a number of times since then.)

Donatello, David, c. 1428, bronze, originally displayed in the Medici Palace, Florence

David as Republican Hero in Florence

In the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, almost all of Europe was governed by monarchs and feudal lords. With the growth of urban trading centers after 1100, mercantile elites in some Italian cities eventually managed to organize and share economic resources to fund mercenary armies and overthrow the local, feudal aristocracy. In these burgher republics, nobles were forbidden from holding public office and the tall towers on their palaces were demolished. Among the Italian republics created in the late thirteenth and fourteenth century, Florencewas the largest, richest, and most powerful, followed by Siena, and Pisa. (Venice was a courtly republic, more oligarchy than republic since it was ruled by a small group of noble families with senators enjoying lifetime appointments.)

The republics of late medieval Italy looked back to the Roman republic as their historical and spiritual model, and to Roman republican virtues of simplicity, austerity, humility, devotion to the common good, shared economic resources, fierce loyalty to the state, and a socio-political rhetoric of horizontal power shared by equal citizens (that is, by men from the leading families). That most of these Italian cities had been founded by the ancient Romansonly made this republican myth-making easier.

In addition to mining Roman political history for exemplary republican figures like Brutus, Lucretia, Marcus Curtius, Lucius Scaevola and others, the Italian republics also interpreted classical mythology and Christian history along republican lines. We have already seen one Christian republican image in Masaccio’s Christ and the Tribute Money with its burgher republican ideology of shared economic resources and obedience to civil and religious authority.

The most important Christian example of Italian republican ideals was David with Judith receiving new attention as well. Both were famous for slaying the generals or leading warriors of tyrants (Goliath, Holofernes).

Needless to say, the burgher, republican mythology of David common in fifteenth-century Florence generally ignored the young shepherd boy's later elevation to the throne as king of the Israelites and his lust for the married Bathsheba who he commanded into his bed as one of his many wives after having her husband killed. As always with any theme, David was not a static figure with a single, clear meaning. Each social group fashioned its own interpretation of David in accordance with its group values. In Medieval and Renaissance court culture, David was the great Biblical king and ancestor of a royal or imperial Christ. He was the cosmic ruler-musician whose harp symbolized the universal harmony of his government. He was thebuilder of the temple of Jerusalem and the great patron of architectural monuments, He wasthe divinely-protected conqueror presiding over corpse-strewn battle fields and carrying out the “vengeance of the Lord” to use an Old Testament phrase. As a Biblical theme in Medieval and Renaissance court culture, David legitimized courtly political values and conferred divine favor on autocratic regimes.

In fifteenth-century Florentine republican culture, David became a heroic example of the new humanist piety of civic engagement, modesty, humility, fortitude, and divine favor. He exemplified and sanctified the virtuous citizen-hero who bravely volunteered to fight for his fatherland and whose victories over much greater forces showed divine providence guiding and protecting the “little”republics. The republican cult of David recalls a passage from the “Panegyric on Florence” written by the most important Florentine humanist of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, Leonardo Bruni, Chancellor of the Republic of Florence.

Always possessing acertain modesty, Florence has preferred to credit its deeds to divine intervention rather than claim them on account of its own virtue. Consequently, Florence has never become inflated in its successes, nor have its victories been accompanied by retribution ...

David’s youth and small size was also crucial for republican imagery because it gave visual form to the triumph of the little guy, the ordinary burgher over the great lords, and the victory of the “little” burgher republics over the much larger and more powerful feudal regimes. The greatest of these which threatened Florence in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century was the duchy of Milan headed by the Visconti familywhich lay siege to Florencemore than once and came very close to conquering the city. (On the eve of one decisive battle, the Duke of Milan died suddenly, lending credence to Florentine myths of divine providence.)

The virtuous smallness of the burgher and the burgher republic went hand in hand with a burgher morality of republican simplicity, manliness, humility, and austerity, defined sharply against an extravagance, lechery, immorality, pride, and vast scale projected onto kingdoms, princely rulers, and courtly elites.

As a juvenile shepherd boy, David also underscored Florence as an innocent, virtuous pastoral state uncorrupted by the luxuries, overly refined habits, and vices of “adult” courtly civilization. (Needless to say, the reality of Florencewas quite different from this republican rhetoric. Fifteenth-century Florence was actually the largest city in Europe and the wealthiest and most powerful city in central Italy. And locally, it acted more like a local Goliath by conquering or harassing hundreds of smaller towns and neighboring cities like Arezzo and Siena.)

Florentine burgher oppositions between large and small, tyrannical and free, noble and burgher, corrupt and virtuous explain why all of the many fifteenth-century Florentine representations of David depicted a young boy. Examples include two sculptures by Donatello and later works by Castagno, Pollaiuolo, Ghirlandaio, Verrocchio, Pesellino. All of these works expressed Florentine republican values, starting with Donatello's first David, a wooden statue carved in a late medieval style. Commissioned in 1408 by the Florentine magistrates for the city hall, this statue was installed with a republican inscription.

"To those who fight strongly for the fatherland, God lends aid even against the most terrible foe".

The republican tradition imaged in Donatello’s second David can be clarified by looking at another Florentine David made around the same time. In the 1440s, Pesellino painted two scenes of a republican David on the sides of a Florentine wedding chest. The first scene moves from David’s pastoral youth and virtue as a shepherd at the far left to his arming under the supervision of the Israelite King Saul (shown with a dragon on his helmet), to his victory over Goliath on a battlefield just outside Jerusalem, here shown as fifteenth-century Florence. The second panel shows the triumphal procession of David and Saul, each on separate chariots, approaching Jerusalem-Florence. The Bible notes that King Saul promised the hand of his daughter to the man who killed Goliath and describes the women of Jerusalem who went out, singing and dancing, to meet the victorious David. [i] This explains the festive women emerging from Jerusalem-Florence at the far right and the marriage scene shown to the far right of the second panel where David marries Michal, Saul’s daughter. (For his dowry, the impoverished David slew two hundred Philistines and presented their foreskins to his delighted father in law.) By setting this scene against the city walls of Florence, Pesellino played on the same republican humanist ideology of marriage and family as the foundation of the godly, prosperous, powerful state described in the writings of fifteenth-century Florentine humanists such as Alberti’s On the Family(c. 1434)and Barbaro’s On Conjugal Duties (c. 1415).[ii]

The tradition of Florentine images of a republican David continued into the later fifteenth century with Castagno’s David and Goliath, painted around 1450 on a ceremonial shield as an icon of Florentine military victory. In 1485, Ghirlandaio painted another republican David inscribed "to the safety of the fatherland and Christian glory" as an element in a fresco cycle full of patriotic tributes to republican Florence. After overthrowing an autocratic government, the Florentine magistrates commissioned still another republican David in 1503 from the young Michelangelo. To underscore its political meaning, they installed the large statue in front of the city hall where it could safeguard civic liberty and warn all tyrants away. To be sure, that later statue dramatically reinterpreted the republic tradition by depicting David as a fully-grown classical hero modeled on Hercules. [iii]

Donatello’s Bronze David

The first free standing, nude sculpture since antiquity, Donatello's second David, a cast ion bronze, was probably commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici to celebrate the family's prominent role in defeating the larger, expansionist power of Milan ruled by the Visconti dukes. This defeat was formalized in the "Treaty of Ferrara" as engineered by Cosimo’s uncle, the prominent Florentine statesman, Averardo di Francesco de' Medici.

In 1992, the original inscription on the base of the second David was discovered in a document (ca. 1466-9) describing the statue in the old MediciPalace on the Via Larga. (In the late 1440s, Cosimo moved the statue to the center of the courtyard of the new MediciPalace designed by Michelozzo.)The original pedestal was inscribed,

"The victor is whoever defends the fatherland. God crushes the wrath of an enormous foe. Behold! a boy overcomes a great tyrant. Conquer, o citizens!

Kingdoms fall through luxury, cities rise through virtues. Behold the neck of pride severed by the hand of humility". [iv]

The Winged Helmet and the Triumph of Love

Donatello expressed these republican values visually by giving Goliath the winged helmet used as a heraldic device by the Dukes of Milan. And he carved on the helmet of Goliath an image of winged cupids riding and pulling a triumphal chariot. Since burgher republican ideology routinely contrasted burgher virtue with courtly dissipation and lust – see, for example, Donatello’s Banquet of Herod, Penitent Magdalen(who supposedly repented from a life of courtly dissipation),and Judith and Holofernes(a lecherous general destroyed by the chaste heroine) [v]– the triumph of love on Goliath’s helmet allegorized burgher ideas of the dominion of lust in court society. Placed on his helmet where emblematic imagery often appeared in Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance armor, the chariot of Cupid showed a Goliath literally and metaphorically driven by lust,reversing the rational order extolled by humanists in the ideal human being. The common imagery of wings shared by the Visconti and Cupid only underscored the ties in Florentine burgher consciousness between lust and all immoral courtiers and tyrants.

Interestingly, Donatello;’s first wooden David, made around 1408, had a similar patriotic-moral inscription on the base proclaiming the triumph of virtue over vice.

Kingdoms fall through luxury [luxuria], cities rise through virtues. Behold the neck of pride severed by the hand of humility.

Since the word luxuria meant lust as well as extravagance and dissipation, viewers of Donatello’s David would have read the triumph of love on Goliath’s helmet as an explicit image of courtly vice in general and of Visconti corruption in particular. Though Italian Renaissance humanist culture also developed positive ideas on the triumph of love, especially after 1470 as seen in Botticelli’s depictions of Venus, Donatello used the theme ironically here to suggest the fall of courtly tyranny through its own depravity.

The Site of the Statue and Its Medicean Significance

The republican qualities of Donatello's second David were considerably strengthened when the statue was moved to the courtyard of the Medici's new "Roman republican" palace designed by Michelozzo in the early 1450s. Set within an architecture boldly proclaiming the Roman republican strength of Florence and of its leading citizens like Cosimo de' Medici, Donatello's David found a quasi-public space perfectly suited to its republican meaning.

Displayed in the MediciPalace, Donatello’s David allowed Cosimo to cloak himself in David’s glory. As the richest and most powerful citizen with the most to lose if Florence fell to the duke of Milan, Cosimo used Donatello’s statue to advertise his own republican loyalties and service as a citizen-hero who had helped deliver Florence from its enemies. At the same time, Donatello’s David helped mask Medici power and interests by representing the family as pious, innocent, small-scale citizens dedicated to the larger health of the city-state.

The Nudity of Donatello's David: Republican Explanations

No discussion of Donatello's David is complete without an explanation of its most unusual feature: the figure's nudity. All earlier representations of David showed him with a simple shepherd's tunic or with armor as one would expect for someone going into battle. And all of the other Florentine images of David painted and sculptured in the fifteenth-century returned to a clothed figure. [vi] Michelangelo's statue of 1504 was the first and the last to return to a naked David.

The best explanation for David's nudity is not without some problems. Since Florentine humanist culture looked back to classical antiquity, it makes sense that Donatello stripped David to give him the same kind of nudity commonly used in ancient art as a sign of heroic manliness, virtue, and divinity. In classical art, nudity was often used for deities, triumphant heroes, and victorious athletes to signal a heroic stature. In the Greek world, athletic training and competition took place in the nude. This was true even of the Olympics. And victorious athletes were frequently commemorated with nude sculptures placed outside the major athletic arenas. (The non-Greek world thought this odd. The Greeks saw such nudity as a sign of their superior civilization in a lower world of barbarian nations.)

At a time when Florentine humanists were proudly hailing their city’s virtuous founding by the ancient Romans and representing Florence with Roman republican imagery, the nudity of Donatello's David invited humanistically educated beholders to see this Christian hero as a classical "athlete" or hero, his nudity an emblem of his virtue and divinely-ordained victory. This is exactly what Bruni did when he compared the "Roman" greatness of Florence to the legendary power of an ancient Greek boxer.

"if someone actually saw and inspected this boxer's powerful body, no one would be greatly amazed about these stories ... if someone were to relate and swear these things to me, immediately this image of a very strong man would necessarily come to mind, showing his powerful body and graceful movements and the strength of his members. In like fashion, once this magnificent and splendid city is seen, it dispels all doubts about its greatness and converts former disbelievers to the truth."

The problem with this reading, of course, is that Donatello's David is a slender, weak, boyish figure lacking the physical prowess of a classical hero (a problem eventually remedied by Michelangelo). Yet even this inconsistency makes some sense when we remember that David triumphed not through prowess but through divine intervention. The core of his appeal for a small republican city-state like Florence was his weakness as a simple shepherd boy and the way his victory revealed the intervening hand of God.

One might say Donatello did his best to balance off two conflicting impulses of the day. Thus he satisfied a new humanist desire to heroicize David with a classical nudity while preserving the Christian mystery of a boy triumphing over a giant. All later fifteenth-century Florentine representations of David including examples by Castagno, Verrocchio, and Ghirlandaio adhered to the boyish David. A truly athletic, heroic David only emerged with Michelangelo's statue in the early sixteenth century at a time when Michelangelo was busy pioneering a heroic musculature for every subject he took up.

Double Standards for Feminine Nudity in Humanist Republican Culture

Though Donatello's Biblical hero couldn't match the physical strength of the naked Greek boxer Bruni envisioned as an image of Florence, the masculine nudity of the David was still roughly compatible with the "Roman" patriarchal politics seen in Bruni, in Barbaro's On Wifely Duties, and in Masaccio's Brancacci Chapel. No naked female body could have ever represented virtue, strength, or military triumph in the republican culture of fifteenth-century Florence. When Donatello later sculpted a triumphal Judith Beheading Holofernes as another image of Florentine republican victory, the heroine remained fully clothed. Female nakedness did appear in Italian art between 1400 and 1470 but it was generally reserved for sinful females such as Masaccio's Eve or Donatello's Penitential Mary Magdalen commissioned in 1455 in the city's Baptistry where Christians were ritually cleaned of original sin. The Magdalen was as famous for her indulgence in sexual sins as she was for her later penitence when she retired to live for thirty years by herself in a cave. Even here, Donatello clothed his Magdalen with the long hair she grew as a solitary hermit in a cave. Equally penitential was the Magdalen's gaunt, muscular, aging body which publicly renounced all corrupt, "female" carnality.