Michelangelo's David: Florentine History and Civic Identity - Hardcover

Paoletti, John T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 110704359X ISBN 13: 9781107043596

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2015

Synopsis

This book takes a new look at the interpretations of, and the historical information surrounding, Michelangelo's David. New documentary materials discovered by Rolf Bagemihl add to the early history of the stone block that became the David and provide an identity for the painted terracotta colossus that stood on the cathedral buttresses for which Michelangelo's statue was to be a companion. The David, with its placement at the Palazzo della Signoria, was deeply implicated in the civic history of Florence, where public nakedness played a ritual role in the military and in the political lives of its people. This book, then, places the David not only within the artistic history of Florence and its monuments but also within the popular culture of the period as well.

About this title

About the Author

John T. Paoletti is Professor of the History of Art, Emeritus, and the William R. Kenan Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University. He taught the history of Italian Renaissance art and of the art of the twentieth century from 1972 to 2009. He received Wesleyan's Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the College Art Association's Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award. He has been a Fellow at the School of Historical Studies, the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, and a visiting professor at the Villa I Tatti. From 1996 to 2000, he was the editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin. He is co-author, with Gary Radke, of Art in Renaissance Italy, now in its fourth edition. He is co-editor, with Roger Crum, of Renaissance Florence: A Social History (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 110704359X
• ISBN 13: 9781107043596
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 399