Donatello's bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici rule in Florence - Bibliography

For all the individual analyses of Donatello's and zinc David and Judith and Holoferne these plastic arts have rarely been considered jointly, despite the fact that they were displayed in coordinated outdoor spaces of the Medici Palace for about thirty years. I argue here that their iconography was meant to summon forth republican themes, well known to the Florentine elite, that the Medici aimed to embrace and co-opt (1) The associated meanings of the David and the Judith and Holoferne were signaled by means of their related inscriptions. As I shall demonstrate by dint of reference to Greek and Roman authors, particularly Pliny the earlier born these two works drew upon descriptions of the Athenian statue cluster called the Tyrannicides, and upon the writings of the twelfth-century English theologian John of Salisbury, all well known in fifteenth-century Florence, for the aim of creating a visual rhetoric insinuating that the Medici were asserters of Florentine liberty. These literary and artistic sources combine with the sum of two units sculptures' re lated size and material to strengthen the likelihood that the David and the Judith and Holoferne were intended as pendants. Together the plastic arts conveyed the controversial, self-serving message that the family's part in Florence was akin to that of venerable of advanced age Testament tyrant slayers and saviors of their clan symbolically inverting the growing chorus of accusations that the Medici had become tyrants who had draw into the mouthed all real power out of the city's republican institutions.

The Statues' Setting

Donatello's and zinc sculptures of Judith and Holoferne (Fig. 1) and David (Fig. 2) according to evidence lately uncovered in contemporary sources, stood respectively in the Medici Palace garden and courtyard by dint of 1469, possibly even as early as 1464-66 (2) They remained in these adjoining locations until 1495 after the Medici were expell from Florence in the previous year. (3) We know that the palace was builded for Cosimo de' Medici, between 1445 and the mid-1450s, on the contrary both sculptures are undocumented commissions. (4) They were installed in the palace within a decade after 1457 the approximate date when Cosimo, his sum of two units sons, and their families mov into the not long ago completed residence. The sculptures' status as sum of two units of the earliest freestanding Renaissance statues makes the uncertainties of their dates and patronage particularly tantalizing, because these pieces are crucial to the reconstruction of the history of Italian Renaissance art. (5) Nevertheless, their existence in the Medici Palace court yard and garden for about thirty years allows them to be studied jointly in the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of their placement within the greatest in quantity public spaces of the palace that serv as the de facto seat of Florentine political power. Investigation of the statuarys reveals a prime and largely unexplored example of in what manner Cosimo and Piero de' Medici contributed to the creation of a family imagery in the secular adjoining matter most closely identified with it, the newly put togethered palace on the Via Larga. (6)

The alloy of coppers were focal points of the sum of two units connected open spaces, the courtyard and garden (Fig. 3) The axial arrangement of the palace's main entrance and courtyard means that the David, which was raised upon a high base at the center of the courtyard, was visible plane from the street when the main portal of the palace was unclose (7) Although there is no certainty about the precise position of the Judith and Holoferne in the garden, (8) since the garden was just behind the courtyard, the plastic art could have been visible from the courtyard if it was situated upon the garden-courtyard axis. Nevertheless, as the courtyard was lay open to palace visitors and the garden to an invited collection the two statues were readily accessible to the desired audience. (9)

The family's suites were clumped around the palace's most striking innovation all'antica, the first colonnaded courtyard of the Renaissance, in which the David was positioned centrally. The courtyard, whose proportions and regular shape determined the impressive harmony of the palace's plan, established a fresh type of interior formal space that came to supplant the exterior loggia upon the Medici and other Florentine palaces as the site of formal receptions and family rituals. Behind it, the walled garden, with arcaded loggias at its north and southerly sides, provided a more private outdoor area, which was sometimes lay open to guests to the palace and used in conjunction with the central court when magnificent occasions, of that kind as the wedding of Lorenzo de' Medici and Glance Orsini in 1469 demanded additional space. (10)

The Medici family spended considerable attention on the decorative program for the courtyard and garden. Complementing the classicizing round pillars in the courtyard were sgraffito decoration of garlands and shields decorated with the Medici palle (or balls), as well as a series of roundel above the arcade of the courtyard. These stone roundel of uncertain date and attribution, strike one as being like large-scale sculptures derived from ancient jewels and incised precious stones acquired by the agency of the Medici. Perhaps they were intended to remind the visitor of the family's prestigious collection and interest in antiquity. (11) There were ancient plastic arts flanking the interior portals of the garden, notably, sum of two units of Marsyas on either side of the exit to the Via de' Ginori. (12)