What Do You Say to a Naked Masterpiece? Michelangelo's David
Horny Hefty
Covering David:
Michelangelo's David from the Piazza della Signoria to My Refrigerator Door
David M. Gunn
Texas Christian University
d.g...@tcu.edu
(This discussion is illustrated in an album bearing the same title at
VtNM's headquarters on World Groups and xxxRated Groups:
http://xxxratedgroups.com/group/Naked_Men/
http://WorldGroups.com/groups/SpotlightingtheMaleNude
See other albums containing different images of Michelangelo's
paintings and sculpture at these other VtNM locations:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/visualizingthenakedman
http://xxxratedgroups.com/group/ArtisticMaleFigure
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vtnmhistoricalmalenudeart )
Worn out, like the Sistine Madonna in the bedroom" -- Theodor Adorno
I. History: A Meeting
Close on 500 years ago, on January 25th, 1504, an official meeting
took place in Florence to discuss where Michelangelo's statue of
David, then nearing completion, was to find a permanent location. Some
thirty people attended, including city officials and artists, among
whom were Sandro Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo, Filippino Lippi, and
Leonardo da Vinci. Minutes were kept. It would appear that the
consultation took place in a room close to the work site and "reflects
a direct observation and study of the sculpture before the meeting
began" (Levine, 31 n.1; cf. Milanesi, 620). The most advocated site
seems to have been the Loggia dei Signori (later called dei Lanzi),
although in or at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, the home of the
Signoria, the city's ruling council, also had its backers. Both
Palazzo and Loggia are located on the Piazza della Signoria (Palazzo
in center of picture; Loggia, with arches, on the right). In the
event, the statue found its home by the portal of the Palazzo, in the
place where Donatello's Judith had stood. There it was to remain until
the mid-nineteenth century when it was moved, in 1873, inside the
Galleria dell'Accademia - and that is where David is to be found to
this day.
Meaning, of course, is in no small measure a function of context, that
is, of space and time as well as of subjectivity (whose meaning?). The
discussion at the meeting makes clear that the desire to find an
appropriate location for the statue included, at least for some, a
belief that the statue did have a meaning and that a suitable location
needed to be one that would match this meaning. Early in the meeting,
Francesco Monciatto says: "I believe that everything that is made is
made for a specific purpose, and I believe this because [the statue]
was made to be placed on the external pilasters or buttresses around
the church [i.e., the Duomo]. The reason for not wanting to put it
there I do not know, for there it seemed to me it would serve well as
an ornament for the church and the Consuls [of the Wool Guild] - and
the place has been changed.'
Why the change of plans? Randolph Parks responds:
[I]t is likely that the exceptional quality of the statue was the
major reason . . . . We find several members of the practica [the
commission] . . . contemplating a location worthy of the statue, a
place where it would be honored and esteemed. I see no reason to
doubt, therefore, that after the quality of the David became
overwhelmingly apparent, the Signoria elected to bring it down to
street level and give it grander exposure . . . ." (Parks, 569 n.41).
That explanation sounds as good as any, especially in hindsight. On
the other hand, the notion of "grander exposure" does prompt another
line of thought.
It is a matter of curiosity to me, an outsider looking in on an art
history debate some years ago on the subject of the statue's location
(between Randolph Parks and Saul Levine), that unmentioned is the
possibility that even in 1504, in Florence, a giant statue of a naked
man with his genitals uncovered might have been considered by many to
be a less than suitable adornment for a cathedral. Nor has Martha
Fader allayed my curiosity with her suggestion that "Michelangelo's
detailed emphasis of David's genitalia is consistent with the
prophetic connotations that the subject matter affords"(Fader, 221).
As Margaret Walters observes, speaking of the rediscovery of the
classical nude in general:
[T]he nude was appreciated only by a small elite, a self-consciously
classicizing avant-garde whose ideas filtered down slowly and against
some opposition. Public feelings about the nude – and indeed, about
the whole cult of the antique – remained conservative, and ranged from
incomprehension to outright hostility. In the 1490s, Savonarola's
furious attack on the new paganism and the nude as its symbol woke a
wide response in Florence itself, home of the new humanism (Walters,
99).
Clearly Monciatto was not concerned about the nudity and still thought
that the cathedral was where the statue belonged (so too Botticelli).
Clearly, too, the directors of the cathedral works, the Opera del
Duomo, were being coy about the reason for the change of plans.
Monciatto claims not to know the reason for the change of plans –
which may have been the case, although he may be fishing,
mischievously, for some direct acknowledgment by others more in the
know. If so, nobody takes the bait. It is striking that nobody answers
his implied question. Indeed, nobody in the whole discussion is
recorded as speaking directly about the "problem" with the statue that
rendered it unsuitable for the cathedral (or more suitable
elsewhere!). It is as though, like the directors of the works, the
commissioners, by unspoken consensus, are trying to avoid the subject.
Why not address the matter openly? One speculation among others, if
the statue's genitals were indeed the problem, is simple
embarrassment. In this world of the new humanism, in which
"sophisticated" Florentines took such pride, those in charge of the
cathedral might well be reluctant to risk ridicule for proposing that
a man's genitals were the stumbling block in the way of erecting for
public display a great work of art. We might then reasonably suppose
that, as a matter of upper class politics, those charged with finding
an alternative location might not be interested in embarrassing the
directors. Nor would it be surprising that the commission, including
in its numbers various artists dependent upon patronage, should fall
into line and be unfailingly polite in not pressing for the reason for
the change.
Yet the discussion could be construed as offering indirect evidence
that some of the participants were indeed aware of a "problem" with
the naked giant, a problem that was conveniently displaced onto the
weather, as we shall see, and the dubious premise that the marble was
spoiled and fragile. I suggest that "covering," however, was indeed
the name of the game and that the minutes lend themselves to a reading
that uncovers this concern.
'I had in mind," says Giuliano da Sangallo early in the discussion,
"the corner of the church [the Duomo]. . . and it would be seen
[there] by the passersby. But since it is a public thing [cosa
pubblica], and the marble is imperfect, being fragile and soft as a
result of it having been exposed to the weather [or "having remained
in the open (all'aria)" (Klein and Zerner)], it does not seem to me
that it would survive permanently." So he proposes - and Leonardo da
Vinci later agrees - placing it under cover in the Loggia dei Signori,
preferably in a recess near the rear wall "with a black niche behind
it like a little chapel." For, he stresses, "it has to be covered
[vuole stare coperta]."
Levine comments that Giuliano's proposal for the Loggia niche
extends his first thought that it be placed in the vicinity of the
Duomo. In such a niche, the biblical, Christian aspects of the David
iconography would be emphasized, and the contemporary, controversial
political aspects of the work would be virtually eliminated. . .
.Within such a recess, it would be almost buried in a position
significantly distant from normal public view and submerged within the
deepest shadows of the Loggia . . . . [T]he David - standing within a
tabernacle - would have been rendered . . . innocuous (Levine, 38-39).
Levine is expounding a political reading of the statue, as a
pro-Republican, anti-Medici, emblem (finding special significance in
the intense leftward gaze). Accordingly he casts Giuliano as a
crypto-Medici sympathizer. But if Giuliano's concern was rather to
contextualize suitably the giant's problematic "nakedness," then
Levine's comments about the neutralizing effects of the Loggia site
fit equally well. In other words, Giuliano suggests, if you are not
going to put the figure high up on a church buttress, then put him
somewhere else where he will be suitably "covered."
Andrea the goldsmith, called Il Riccio, also presses for a location
providing ample cover, although there is some ambiguity about whether
he is supporting the Loggia (more likely, given his speech in context)
or the courtyard inside the Palazzo Vecchio (so Levine) following the
suggestion of Messer Francesco, First Herald of the Signoria, who
opened the discussion. Says Riccio,
[T]here it would be well covered [coperta] and would here be most
highly regarded and most carefully watched against acts to damage it
[or read: against its being spoiled] and it is better to enclose it
[al coperto] so that the passersby go to look at it; it is not for
such a thing to go towards the passersby - the figure should not come
to look at us (Levine, 40-41).
Although the goldsmith's language is ambiguous, Levine suggests,
Riccio is more concerned with damage (guasta) by vandalism than by the
weather (Levine, 42 n.39). In the Palazzo the statue would find an
appropriate setting since it would be confined to the viewing of the
members of the Signoria and others with official business. If Riccio
is speaking of the Loggia, a similar interpretation of his speech may
be made: he is agreeing with Giuliano on the fundamental point that
the statue should be isolated from open public space (see also
Seymour, 59, on the Loggia providing "a certain amount of isolation').
Levine interprets in political terms the concern about wilful damage.
Again, however, as in the case of Giuliano da Sangallo, I suggest that
Riccio may (also?) have another matter on his mind, a concern for
public decency. This "public thing" ought not to be too public! Let
the right sort of people seek it out; let it not be thrust into the
public eye.
Indeed, James Beck finds in the preamble to the minutes a hint that
security against attack was a concern of Michelangelo himself:
. . . the officials of the Duomo, seeing that the statue . . . is
almost finished, and being desirous of placing it in a suitable and
commodious place, one that is secure and solid [locum solidum et
resolidatum], as Michelangelo, the master of the aforesaid giant, has
requested, and [sic] the directors of the Wool Guild, desirous of
putting into effect these wishes, decided to call a meeting . . .
(Beck, 123-4).
'"Clearly," adds Beck, "as he was concluding his assignment,
Michelangelo sought assurances that the placement would prevent
vandalism . . . ." Beck's argument depends upon his translating locum
solidum et resolidatum as "secure and solid" (cf. "sound and solid,"
Klein and Zerner; "firm and solid," Levine; "solid and structurally
trustworthy," Seymour). He thus appears to be aligning "suitable" with
"secure" as terms of social space and "commodious" with "solid" as
terms of material space. While hardly a secure reading, it is one that
I believe fits well with the tenor and direction of the consultation
and suggests, at the very least, that the secretary who wrote the
words may have had more than simply foundations in mind.
Giovanni Cellini, fife-player (a government official according to
Beck, 130), demurs from Giuliano's suggestion because he believes the
statue needs to be seen complete, in the round, "but it cannot be seen
thus." In other words, set far back in the Loggia, the statue would be
not be fully appreciated; rather, it needed to be more in the open
(all'aria). But then that requirement had its own drawbacks. "On the
other hand," he adds, now voicing openly what I have suggested is an
underlying anxiety of both Giuliano and Riccio, "some wretch may hurt
[attack] it with a bar." Hence he proposes a compromise that also has
the virtue of being in agreement with the First Herald's suggestion
(and also, on Levine's reading, Riccio's), namely that the statue be
located inside the Palazzo, in the open courtyard. Here, in relative
security, the statue could be seen "in its entirety" by the
(distinguished and cultivated) persons who frequented the Palazzo.
"Covering," for Giovanni, is really a matter of "enclosing."
Levine's extended argument for understanding opposition to the statue
as politically motivated finds an echo in Beck's comment on Giovanni's
speech:
Giovanni . . . introduced a curious suspicion. If located out in the
open, some nasty person might do the statue harm. That is, for some
unexplained reason, the David might become the target of vandalism (.
. . and such a possibility supports the suspicion that there was a
political aura surrounding the David that could have made it offensive
to some) (Beck, 130).
As I have argued, however, Giovanni does not introduce the suspicion
of the "nasty person" wishing to do the statue harm. That suspicion is
there from the beginning, only becoming unambiguously explicit in
Giovanni's speech - and even then, as Beck observes, it is left
unexplained. Political motives might account for the inferred
hostility, and so might concern about public decency; and in each case
we can understand why, in a meeting of utmost civility, no one would
wish to name the root problem.
In the event, after several governmental changes of mind, the statue
was installed in the Piazza, at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio.
It would appear, on the face of it, that the "coverers" and
"enclosers" lost to those who would see the station "in its entirety"
out in the open.
In the event, too, the statue thus thrust into the public eye was
indeed attacked, on the first night of its being moved out of the
Opera del Duomo, on the 14th of May, 1504. The Diary of Luca Landucci
records that during that night "some stones were thrown at the
colossus to harm it. Watch had to be kept at night . . ." (Klein and
Zerner, 44). Levine, following Charles de Tolnay among others, claims
the stoning was "quite possibly" organized by supporters of the Medici
family (1974: 34 n.13; cf. de Tolnay, 10; McHam, 184 n.50). "Perhaps,"
says Margaret Walters, "but more probably by people shocked by its
insistent nudity" (99); "probably out of a sense of moral outrage on
the part of decent citizens," agrees Monica Bohm-Duchen (21; cf.
Parks, 565 n.24; ).
Even more to the point is a much overlooked item about which Frederick
Hartt has reminded us:
In a triumphant example of Second Republic prudery, not only the
genitals but what Vasari called the "divine flanks" of the David could
not be exposed to innocent Florentine eyes until they had been
provided with a girdle. A brass wire sustaining twenty-eight copper
leaves was paid for on October 31st, according to a document published
by De Nicola in 1917 and subsequently ignored. According to a passage
from Pietro Aretino's famous denunciation of the indecencies of the
Last Judgment, which everyone quotes but no one reads, this girdle was
still in place as late as 1545. (Hartt 1986: 106-107 and 115 n.55-56,
citing Paolo Barocchi in Poggi, vol. 4, 219 n.1).
Thus Hartt accounts for the gap between the statue's journey from the
Duomo workshop to the Piazza della Signoria on May 14-18 and the final
"uncovering" of the statue on July 8th , as described in Landucci's
diary. A girdle had to be provided so that the giant's offending
genitals could be decently covered. It would seem that the coverers
won after all.
I am reminded of Leonardo da Vinci's words in the consultation, also
singularly unremarked upon by the critics: "I agree it should be in
the Loggia, where Giuliano has said . . . ; with appropriate ornament
[chon ornamento decente] and in a way that does not interfere [in modo
no guasti] with the ceremonies of state" (Klein and Zerner). Or as
Seymour translates: ". . .with decency and decorum, and so displayed
that it does not spoil the ceremonies of the officials."
Whatever the statue meant to Michelangelo, therefore, I suggest that
it meant something else to the officials in charge of its location.
They could not accept it as it was, not, at least, all'aria, in the
open. Among its manifold meanings, at least in a public space, were
sexual dimensions that required covering up. The statue had to be
censored. Interpretations of its "meaning" that ignore the discussion
of the statue's "problem" and its subsequent censorship simply do not
adequately account for the statue's meaning in its actual "lived"
space.
II. Intertextual Readings:
To London, New York, Springfield, Washington, and Beyond
1. London: Queen Victoria's Fig Leaf
In 1857 a plaster cast of David, eighteen feet high, was presented to
Queen Victoria by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1857, and forthwith
donated by the Queen to the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria
and Albert Museum, in London. (Collage: the Queen's fig leaf bottom
right)
Anecdotal information suggests that on her first encounter with the
cast of David at the Museum, Queen Victoria was so shocked by the
nudity that a proportionally accurate fig leaf was commissioned, and
kept in readiness of any royal visits, when it was hung on the figure
using two strategically placed hooks
(www.vam.ac.uk/exploring/shortstories/fig_leaf).
The eighteen inch high plaster cast of a fig leaf is kept in its own
display box behind the plinth of the statue, though from 1997 to 1999
it toured the United States with a V & A exhibition, drawing much
publicity (pictured above, bottom right). Curiously, the fig leaf is
exhibited under the theme, Teaching by Example, which "discusses the
mission of education and the teaching of design by using objects as
examples" (www.boston.com/mfa/london/pressrel.shtml). I confess to
being somewhat nonplussed, though as one American museum director
observed, "It certainly shows the decorum of the period"
(www.neh.fed.us/news/humanities/1997-07/design.html). The question is,
of what time and space are we speaking? Victorian England or
Renaissance Florence? The question is also, whose decorum?
2. New York and Evanston: Cynthia Pearl's Fig Leaf
In 1954 a well known U.S. publisher brought out a volume by Cynthia
Pearl Maus, The Old Testament and the Fine Arts: An Anthology of
Pictures, Poetry, Music, and Stories Covering the Old Testament. It,
of course, covers Michelangelo's David. (Collage: Cynthia Pearl's fig
leaf on the statue, left.)
3. Springfield: David With His Pants Down
The place is Florence, the time, 1990 or thereabouts. The news is out:
Michelangelo's David is to tour the United States, coast to coast.
Well, to be precise, New York, Springfield, and if there is time,
Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles. And so to Springfield, where Marge, who
has been leading a crusade against television violence, answers the
door to find her friends, Maude and Helen, on a recruiting drive - to
protest against an abomination.
Marge: Mm, but that's Michelangelo's David. It's a masterpiece.
Helen: [gasp] It's filth! It graphically portrays parts of the human
body, which, practical as they may be, are evil.
Marge: But I like that statue.
Helen: [gasp] I told you she was soft on full frontal nudity! Come on,
girls . . . .
As the protest swells, Kent Brockman fills the television screen:
Kent Brockman: Is it a masterpiece or just some guy with his pants
down? That's our topic tonight on Smartline . . . .
Beaten down, Marge desists, and she and Homer go to the museum to see David:
Homer: Well, there he is. Michelangelo's "Dave."
For her part, Marge wishes that the kids were here viewing this
masterpiece of art, instead of watching cat and mouse, Itchy and
Scratchy, commit mayhem on the television. Homer is more sanguine:
Homer: Pretty soon, every boy and girl in Springfield Elementary
School is going to come and see this thing.
Marge: Really? Why?
Homer: They're forcing "em! [and he laughs]
(Excerpts from Swarzwelder, Itchy and Scratchy and Marge)
4. Washington, DC: "With Decency and Decorum"
If you've kept abreast of the news in Washington, you're probably
aware of the big cover-up at the U.S. Justice Department . . . .
Spirit of Justice, or Minnie Lou as she's affectionately called by
Washington insiders, is a 12½-foot-tall aluminum statue that has
watched over the Great Hall since 1936. But now Minnie Lou is hiding
behind a blue curtain, upstretched arms, flowing toga, bared breast
and all. It's that third part that's got her in this pickle. Her
companion, Majesty of Law, a male statue slightly more modestly
attired (a loincloth covers the crucial parts), is also hidden behind
the curtain, but it's Minnie Lou who's caused the ruckus. Seems she is
positioned so that she frequently appears in the background, just
above Attorney General John Ashcroft's head, in photos of the attorney
general speaking to the press [Collage: right]. This made Ashcroft
uncomfortable . . . and a member of his staff ordered the curtains
(Cathy Frisinger, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, February 6, 2002).
Frisinger observes sagely, moreover, that historical precedents exist
for "such cover-ups," pointing to the papal flap over the "offending
body parts" of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes: "after the
artist's death, judiciously placed cloths were added to his scenes,"
she notes, though she does wonder if there might have been a cheaper
way than $7,900 curtains to "ease Ashcroft's mind and cover up Minnie
Lou's naughty bits." In the Ashcroft spirit of decency and decorum,
however, Star-Telegram illustrator Jeremy Cannon proposes some
"blue-curtain treatment to some of our favorite famous statues,"
adding that "it's curtains for Michelangelo's lean, mean fighting
machine, David, 1504." (Collage: bottom left; with Gainsborough's Blue
Boy above left, in the spirit of intertextuality)
5. And Beyond: But There is yet Another Problem with the Problem
Statue Rejected: Jerusalem has turned down a gift of a replica of
Michelangelo's state of David because the nude figure would offend
Israel's Orthodox Jews and Arabs. The offer from Florence, Italy,
where the original work is displayed, was made in honor of
celebrations of 3,000 years of Jerusalem's history, the Yediot
Aharonot newspaper reported Friday. Instead, Florence will give
Jerusalem a copy of a bronze statue of David by the 15th-century
artist Andrea del Verocchio. That David is clothed (Atlanta
Constitution, July 22, 1995).
Michelangelo's David is, of course, uncircumcised (on which subject
see Steinberg, 165-7) - no small irony. David is the giant. Goliath is
reduced to nothing. And the Giant is uncircumcised. As David so
eloquently put it: "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he
should defy the armies of the living God?" So, after all, David does
not belong in Jerusalem. Meaning is a question of space.
III. More History:
Social Location and Renaissance Florence
Let me go back, however, to "history" again. If we are to contemplate
some of the dimensions of David's public nakedness in the Florence of
1504 - the V & A fig leaf, by the way, is about eighteen inches high -
there are some more immediate social and historical contexts that we
might consider.
1. Artistic Tradition: David in the Middle Ages
For a start, we could ask: How was the biblical David customarily
displayed in the artistic tradition that Michelangelo inherited?
Meaning is also a function of difference. In brief, the medieval David
appears in four main guises: as Psalmist or inspired poet-musician, as
the penitent in the Bathsheba affair, as the boy or youth who brings
down Goliath with his sling, and as the boy who decapitates Goliath.
It is not that he is never shown naked, for he is, as in a medieval
illumination of Psalm 69 (Salvum me; top right) - but to my knowledge
he always has his clothes on when he is making music, being penitent,
throwing rocks, and head chopping. In the early Italian renaissance,
we see similar images, as in the well-known painting by Andrea del
Castagno (center), which combines both the sling and sword scenes in
one. David remains covered.
2. Donatello's David: The Homoerotic Victory/Defeat
It is Donatello, in Florence in the mid-1400s (the date is debated),
who changes all this. His earlier marble David is, as expected,
clothed. His bronze David is naked - more or less. With his hat and
boots framing an adolescent body that many have deemed erotic (and
often homoerotic), he stands with his right hand embracing the
knob-topped shaft of a sword hilt, a stone cupped lightly in his left
hand, and his left boot resting jauntily on the severed head of
Goliath. The giant's helmet sprouts wings, one of which is lodged up
(or slipping down?) the boy's inner thigh. On the visor is a relief
(FIGURE 12). It is, I believe (Gunn 1993), a depiction of the triumph
of Amor (see further, Schneider 1973; 1976; 1996: 186-94). A
classicist and poet such as Michelangelo would no doubt have
recognized the scene. Is the figure in the frieze then Aphrodite, whom
Eros serves, or is it perhaps David himself, Eros in human
transformation? Whatever the case, the irony is great: Goliath (who
some argue is a self-portrait of Donatello) wears on his head the
symbols of his downfall. The triumph of the erotic boy is the death of
the man. Amor vincit . . . .
In Michelangelo's day, Donatello's bronze David was located in the
inner courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio. It was proposed by the Herald
at the meeting of 1504 that he should be replaced by Michelangelo's
David. His back leg, it was explained (i.e., the one with the wing up
it), was somewhat "awkward" or "ridiculous" (schiocha).
Michelangelo's David, then, was conceived and fashioned in the
presence of the dominant David of the preceding century, Donatello's
homoerotic youth.
3. Homosexuality in Florence: Michelangelo's Space
During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Florence had a reputation
for sodomy, by which was usually meant sex between males. In his
recent study, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in
Renaissance Florence, Michael Rocke observes:
The sexual renown of Florentine males was remarked on by both local
and foreign chroniclers, condemned by preachers, deplored by concerned
citizens, derided - and occasionally admired - by writers and poets.
Their erotic tastes were so well known even north of the Alps that in
contemporary Germany "to sodomise" was popularly dubbed florenzen and
a "sodomite" a Florenzer (Rocke, 3; cf. 12-13).
Of course, reputations do not necessarily correspond to realities. But
Rocke suggests that this reputation has its foundation. Available to
him is extensive evidence, namely the records of the Office of the
Night (Ufficiali di notte), a magistracy set up in 1432 precisely to
pursue and prosecute sodomy.
During its seventy-year tenure from 1432 to 1502, this magistracy . .
. carried out the most extensive and systematic persecution of
homosexual activity in any premodern city . . . . In this small city
of around only 40,000 inhabitants, every year during roughly the last
four decades of the fifteenth century an average of some 400 people
were implicated and 55 to 60 condemned for homosexual relations . . .
. [That is,] as many as 17,000 individuals or more were incriminated
at least once for sodomy, with close to 3,000 convicted.
These extraordinary figures [he goes on] . . . begin to furnish a
sense of the dimensions, the vitality, and the contradictory
significance of homosexuality in the sexual and social life of
Florence. Sodomy was ostensibly the most dreaded and evil of sexual
sins, and was among the most rigorously controlled of crimes; yet in
the later fifteenth century, the majority of local males at least once
during their lifetimes were officially incriminated for engaging in
homosexual relations. (Rocke, 4-5)
So on the one hand, we see in Florence during the early Renaissance,
on the part of the elite, a passionate concern for the classical world
that might well be thought to legitimate sexual relations between
males; and at the same time we see the Church's teaching against
sodomy enacted in laws which provided severe penalties, including
death by burning - and in Florence, in particular, we see a series of
clear decisions by the ruling class to press the issue of sodomy as a
serious moral and social problem.
Where would this have placed Michelangelo, unmarried, like most men of
his age - he was about twenty-six when he started on the statue?
Though young and of a family of fallen fortune, his reputation as an
artist was high. Would that reputation have afforded him some measure
of protection were he to have indulged his apparent passion for
attractive young men? Artistic reputation had not stopped Sandro
Botticelli, at age fifty-seven, being charged with sodomy in 1502, the
year after Michelangelo began work on his giant, though the charge was
dismissed after a hearing - as had the charge against Leonardo da
Vinci some twenty-five years earlier (1476) (Rocke 139, 298 n.120-21).
(On the subjects of "homosexuality" and Italian Renaissance art, in
general, and Michelangelo's sexuality, in particular, see further
Liebert, 270-311; Saslow 1986: 17-62; 1988; 1991: 13-18, 26-29;
Sternweiler 1993; Kemp, 198; and the criticisms of Beck, 143-54.)
The arguments for the political, particularly anti-Medici, import of
Michelangelo's statue are double edged when taken in tandem with a
serious consideration of the artist's social location in the Florence
of the Officers of the Night. As recent research makes abundantly
clear, there is, in the context of the Renaissance, "the
intractability, the impossibility of delivering arguments about
sexuality in the period without recognizing how fully embedded they
are in the political" (Goldberg, 10; see further Bray 1982; 1994;
Smith 1994). If a man were a rebel against "nature," would it be
surprising if he were also a rebel against society and religion?
Given the depth of homosocial relations among Renaissance Florentine
men, it is easy to see that homoerotic behavior was always a
potentially perilous path to take for someone whose life and work fell
readily within political profiles. Such must have been the case with
Michelangelo. The sexual was always potentially the political.
IV. Michelangelo's David: Uncovered
It is commonplace to see Donatello's bronze David and Michelangelo's
marble giant as twin ideals of the Renaissance male nude - and remark
upon their striking difference. The homoerotic dimensions of the small
bronze figure are widely acknowledged, including H. W. Janson's apt
ascription to him of the epithet le beau garcon sans merci (Janson,
85), along with assertions of the statue's political meaning as an
emblem of liberty over tyranny. But, in the case of the marble David,
while much play is made of the statue's political import (liberty over
tyranny), few critics seem to recognize any sexual dimension. A
notable exception is James Saslow:
His eighteen-foot nude colossus imagines not Donatello's biblically
correct adolescent, but a magnificently muscled young adult, glowering
and snorting in anticipation of grappling with Goliath. The statue's
official symbolism was both religious and civic - David was the city's
mascot - but since Donatello the subject had resonated erotically, and
Michelangelo here epitomizes male beauty and barely restrained
physicality. The artist identified psychologically with the plucky
hero - whom he transformed to someone nearly his own age at the time -
and perhaps sexually as well. Although his private fantasies remain
implicit, they must have been widely shared (Saslow 1999: 96-7; cf.
Bohm-Duchen, 21).
For most part, however, the critics are silent on the subject. The
statue is asexual. Those giant genitals are merely necessary
appendages, in antique classical mode, to the young hero who scowls at
the threatening oppressor.
Of course, Michelangelo may have decided to have nothing to do with
the earlier bronze. His sculpture was to be different. And, indeed, he
chooses to represent a different moment in the biblical narrative.
Yet, as Saslow suggests, how could his statue have nothing to do with
the famous bronze, the first statue to have depicted a nude young
David, that had spawned already a spate of young Davids - howbeit with
more clothes on - in imitation? It seems to me that he was stuck with
Donatello's David, like it or not, and that he managed in his own way
the homoerotic theme that Donatello had set in play. The latent
political or civic meaning of the work is evident, and it is that
"overt message" and not its "inner tension" that would have been
looked for by most contemporaries, suggests Michael Levey (146). Yet
the poised, inner-spring tension of the statue is widely recognized.
It is where Michelangelo, the lover of young male beauty, himself
resides, is "at home." Caught between desire and action, between
liberty and oppression, in a moment and space where sublimation seems
the only sure path to victory. Donatello's David looks with
satisfaction at his conquest. Michelangelo's David looks anxiously but
steadfastly at the oncoming foe - or is it a lover? Those genitals,
uncovered, remind us of their owner's affinity with Donatello's erotic
conquerer, but at the same time their repose is of a piece with the
tense repose of the whole giant figure, which tends to diminish them,
render them inconsequential, invisible, covered after all.
Michelangelo's David is a giant attempt to sublimate Donatello's
iconoclastic homoeroticism.
V. The Biblical David: Uncovered
Until recently, though the suggestion has long been voiced, few
commentators have been willing to entertain seriously reading the
story of David and Jonathan in terms of a "homosexual" (for want of a
better term) relationship. To read a relationship with same-sex
possibilities was simply "reading in," going too far, perverse. On the
other hand, a reading that placed the language of love in the
framework of political/covenantal language between vassal and
overlord, that was worth considering (see, e.g., Thompson).
But, of course, as no few have pointed out over the past decade (not
least Roland Boer), a "homosexual" (or, in Boer's case, "queer')
reading finds plenty of play in the text (see further Schroer and
Staubli; Fewell and Gunn, 105-108, 141-63; cf. Nissinen, 53-6,
123-34). Let me here just mention briefly the richly layered lament
for Jonathan.
'Wonderful your love to me, more than love of women." He casts the
relationship in a particular light. The point of comparison is women.
Jonathan belongs in the relationship in the position of a woman, even
if only to surpass her. That aligns Jonathan with the passive, the one
who is penetrated; David with the active, the one who penetrates -
even if, as Boer rightly observes, David is largely passive in his
relationships (Boer, 26-28). His rhetoric makes David the "man."
Doubly so, since his collection of women is a matter of notoriety. Who
else better to judge what love might be more than the love of women!
Thus the words that praise Jonathan, and claim his endorsement, at the
same time subtly devalue him. And even more so, for as royal prince he
should have played the "man" to the commoner's "woman." David has
reversed the sexual roles just as he has reversed the political roles.
By claiming the homosexual relationship, but strictly on his terms, he
turns it into a proclamation of his own ascendency, his inevitable
dominion, and of the end of the house of Saul. The sexual is always
potentially the political.
The reason why the unspeakable reading has become speakable is, of
course, all about context, about space and time - the text's location
in the space occupied by the women's movement of the past thirty years
in the West, and especially in the United States, and, not
unconnected, the rise of gay liberation. David's genitals in the books
of Samuel are being, more consistently, uncovered.
VI. David in Fragments:
The Proliferation of Space and the Dissipation of Meaning
David's genitals on the statue of Michelangelo have also been
uncovered in recent years, as the statue has been claimed by the gay
community (certainly in the United States; cf. Saslow 1999: 96) as an
emblem of gay liberation. In such a context the genitals - hidden with
fig leaves from the prurient gaze, rendered invisible by the politics
of Renaissance Florence, and vaporized by their ascription to "high
art" (via the space of museum, "art book," and university classroom) -
become charged again with sexuality.
But if the sexually charged textual David, in the body that
Michelangelo gave him, has found his home in contemporary gay
communities this, I suspect, will not be a permanent nostos. This
homecoming is elusive, not least because the homecomer's own standing
as "gay" man is elusive in the first place, in the biblical narrative,
but also because the gigante that he has become retains that
ambiguity, not unlike its maker, Michelangelo himself. Whereas
Donatello's bronze David is agressively homerotic, Michelangelo's
David is on the defensive. Is he, or is he not? That remains the
question.
Even more important, however, in contesting this determined relocation
of an uncovered David is the power of technology to disrupt all such
spaces. Photography and the postcard, products of industrialization,
proliferated the spaces in which David was to be found. Technological
change enabled the mass distribution of the David images that have
come to signify a communal emblem beyond the reach of the elite who
have controlled the ownership and consumption of "high art." Indeed,
the power of the David image, as a gay liberation image, derived in
part precisely from its authority as "high art" in ironic counterpoint
to its derived biblical authority. But technology, especially with
David's entry into electronic space, is constantly finding further
ways to subvert the authority of that "high art" and with it, any
remaining vestiges of biblical authority. By the same token, any
meaning David might have as "uncovered" icon of gay liberation is
subject to the challenge of proliferating spaces with multifarious
meanings competing, assimilating, and fragmenting. The commodification
of David makes him as ubiquitous as a MacDonalds hamburger, but
without the brand name recognition. What does David "stand for" now?
William Hart, in his account of Edward Said and Theodor Adornono on
culture, draws my attention to Adorno's critique of the
commodification of popular music ("On the Fetish Character in Music
and the Regression of Listening").
Music [argues Adorno] is no longer a revolutionary and unruly attack
on the cultural privileges of the ruling class, but has degenerated
into a depoliticized "handmaiden" of consumerism. Depoliticization
results from the vulgarization of art, from mindless repetition and
irrelevant consumption. Because musical works are "played again and
again," they "wear out, like the Sistine Madonna in the bedroom" . . .
. The possibility of critique drops out, creating a critical void . .
. . music becomes a diversion, a consumption opportunity (Hart, p.30
and see further 30-39).
We can digitalize David, nor from a photo but from the "real thing,"
so that he can be distributed more readily to scholars and museums and
studied more "accurately" (The Digital Michelangelo Project at
Stanford University -- graphics.stanford.edu/projects/mich/). But as
the market reveals, we don't need accuracy to recognize David.
Accurately or inaccurately, we can view him and use him in manifold
ways. We can dress him up and locate for him a space, a home, and a
meaning of our own choosing. I work in Texas. So naturally I am
partial to a western David. Easily done. We can choose to uncover or
cover him, exposing or concealing that problematic signifier, moving
him towards or away from Donatello's David, determining his sexuality
with the click of a magnet on a refrigerator door, or the click of a
cursor on a computer screen. And we can easily have him express gender
confusion, which is always lurking around the place where sexual
boundaries are in dispute.
At the same time we can recover the political David, merely by
substituting a head. Same body, new head, new politics. But more than
that, we can bring David's head home - in parts - the counterpart to
Goliaths's head. Just as modernist biblical critics - historical
critics - fragmented the biblical text in which David lived, rending
one part of his story, his life, his person, from another; so
postmodernist decorators of refrigerators or filing cabinets can
carefully relocate a member of David. So we have David in fragments -
arrange them as you please! A nose, an eye, an ear, a mouth. I've not
seen it yet, but a "Bobbiched" penis is bound to happen. In the
meantime we can live with the David light-switch plate.
David decapitated Goliath and brought him to Jerusalem on a sword or
pole, as depicted in Bible illustration and freestanding art since the
Middle Ages. Now we can have David's head, or tokens of it, on a pole,
for ornaments, like the bodies of Saul and Jonathan's bodies
decorating the walls of Gath. David in fragments, the truly postmodern
David.
David is what advertisers love, a universally recognized commodity.
You can have him head on or head off. He sells food and restaurants.
He sells books, from highbrow works of biblical academia (Flanagan's
David's Social Drama sports possibly the first hologram to be used on
a book not on holography), with a focus on the giant's head, to books
with a "broader" market, with a focus elsewhere. The clothed slingshot
David is still hanging in there but being crowded out. Advertisers
prefer "high art" (but not Donatello's high art), and high tech
especially so: a "quality" David stands for a "quality" sound board.
And there's always room for a little joke about those genitals or the
naked backside that Giovanni Cellini felt needed to be seen. David
even sells "gay (family values) games" alongside a new companion, not
Jonathan or even Tommaso Cavalieri, but, in a wry twist, Bougereau's
Venus.
Last but not least, the gigante also sells himself - finished in
antique stone, small with fig leaf, only $138 plus shipping and
handling.
Hearty
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ackroyd, P. R. 1975. "The Verb Love - 'aheb in the David-Jonathan
Narratives - A Footnote." Vetus Testamentum 25: 213-4.
Adorno, Theodor. 1991. "On the Fetish Character in Music and the
Regression of Listening" and "Culture Industry Reconsidered." In J. M.
Bernstein, ed., The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture.
London: Routledge. Pp. 26-52 and 85-92.
Beck, James H. 1999. The Three Worlds of Michelangelo. New York and
London: W. W. Norton & Company.
Boer, Roland. 1999. "Queer Heroes." In Knockin' on Heaven's Door: The
Bible and Popular Culture. Biblical Limits; London and New York:
Routledge. Pp. 13-32.
Bohm-Duchen, Monica. 1992. The Nude. Themes in Art; London: Scala
Books.
Bray, Alan. 1982. Homosexuality in Renaissance England. London: Gay
Men's Press.
____ 1994. "Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in
Elizabethan England." In Jonathan Goldberg, ed., Queering the
Renaissance (see below). Pp. 40-61.
Fader, Martha Alice Agnew. 1977. Sculpture in the Piazza della Signoria
as Emblem of the Florentine Republic, Ph.D. thesis, University of
Michigan.
Fewell, Danna Nolan and David M. Gunn. 1993. Gender, Power, and
Promise: The Subject of the Bible's First Story. Nashville: Abingdon
Press.
Gaye, Giovanni. 1839-40. Carteggio inedito d'artisti dei secoli XIV,
XV, XVI, 3 vols., Florence. Vol. II, pp. 455-62.
Goldberg, Jonathan, ed. 1994. Queering the Renaissance. Durham, NC, and
London: Duke University Press.
Gunn, David M. 1993. "Goliath's Head: Text, Image, and the Subversion
of Gender (A Study of Donatello's Bronze David)." Paper delivered to
the Constructs of Ancient History and Religion Group at the Society of
Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, Washington.
Hart, William D. 2000. Edward Said and the Religious Effects of
Culture. Cambridge Studies in Religion and Critical Thought; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hartt, Frederick. 1986. "Leonardo and the Second Florentine Republic."
Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 44: 95-116.
Janson, H. W. 1957. The Sculpture of Donatello. Volume Two: Critical
Catalogue. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kemp, Martin. 1997. Behind the Picture: Art and Evidence in the Italian
Renaissance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Klein, Robert, and Henri Zerner, eds. and trans. 1966. Italian Art
1500-1600: Sources and Documents. Englewood Cliffs. Pp. 39-44.
Levey, Michael. 1996. Florence: A Portrait. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Levine, Saul. 1974. "The Location of Michelangelo's David: The Meeting
of January 25, 1504." Art Bulletin 56: 31-49.
Liebert, Robert S. 1983. Michelangelo A Psychoanalytic Study of His
Life and Images, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Maus, Cynthia Pearl Maus. 1954. The Old Testament and the Fine Arts: An
Anthology of Pictures, Poetry, Music, and Stories Covering the Old
Testament. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers.
McHam, Sarah Blake. 1998. "Public Sculpture in Renaissance Florence."
In Looking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture, edited by Sarah Blake
McHam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 149-188
Milanesi, Gaetano. 1875. Le Lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Florence.
Nissinen, Martti. 1998. Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A
Historical Perspective. Trans. Kirsi Stjerna; Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.
Parks, N. Randolph. 1975. "The Placement of Michelangelo's David: A
Review of the Documents." Art Bulletin 57: 560-570.
Poggi, Giovanni. 1979. Il carteggio di Michelangelo. Ed. Paola Barocchi
and Renzo Ristori; Florence: Sansoni, posthumous edn.
Rocke, Michael. 1996. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male
Culture in Renaissance Florence. New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Saslow, James M. 1986. Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in
Art and Society. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
____ 1988. "'A Veil of Ice between My Heart and the Fire':
Michelangelo's Sexual Identity and Early Modern Constructs of
Homosexuality." Genders 2, Summer: 77-90.
____ 1989. "Homosexuality in the Renaissance: Behavior, Identity, and
Artistic Expression." In Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George
Chauncey, Jr., eds., Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and
Lesbian Past. New York: New American Library. Pp. 90-105.
____ 1991. The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press.
____ 1999. Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the
Visual Arts. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Schneider, Laurie. 1973. "Donatello's Bronze David." Art Bulletin 15:
213-16.
____ 1976. "Donatello and Caravaggio: The Iconography of Decapitation."
American Imago 33: 76-91.
Schneider Adams, Laurie.1996. The Methodologies of Art: An
Introduction. New York: IconEditions/HarperCollins.
Schroer, Silvia, and Thomas Staubli. 1996. "Saul, David, und Jonathan -
eine Dreiecksgeschichte? Ein Beitrag Zum Thema 'Homosexualität Im
Ersten Testament.'" Bibel und Kirche 51:15-22.
Seymour, Charles, Jr.1967. Michelangelo's David: A Search for Identity.
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Smith, Alan K. 1994. "Fraudomy: Reading Sexuality and Politics in
Burchiello." In Jonathan Goldberg, ed., Queering the Renaissance (see
above). Pp. 84-106.
Steinberg, Leo. 1996. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in
Modern Oblivion. Second edn revised and expanded; Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press.
Sternweiler, Andreas. 1993. Der Lust der Götter: Homosexualität in
der italienischen Kunst. Von Donatello zu Caravaggio. Berlin: Verlag
Rosa Winkel.
Swartzwelder, John. 1990. "Itchy and Scratchy and Marge." The Simpsons,
episode 7F09. Directed by Jim Reardon. First aired December 20, 1990.
See www.snpp.com/episodes/7F09.
Thompson, J. A. 1974. "The Significance of the Verb Love in the
David-Jonathan Narratives in 1 Samuel." Vetus Testamentum 24:334-8.
Tolnay, Charles de. 1964. The Art and Thought of Michelangelo. Trans.
Nan Buranelli; New York: Pantheon Books.
Walters, Margaret. 1978. The Nude Male: A New Perspective. New York and
London: Paddington Press.