A Statement on Michelangelo’s David Being Decried as “Pornography”
Michelangelo created this astonishing sculpture between 1501 and 1504, based on the biblical account of the battle between David and Goliath told in Samuel, Book 1.
Earlier artists depicted the victorious David standing over the head of the defeated champion of the Philistines. Michelangelo instead created a revolutionary interpretation of the biblical hero, showing a young man armed with only his rock and sling.
David’s nudity serves several functions. Exposing his youthful body reinforces the miraculous nature of his triumph. David is literally bared before God and the viewing public, victorious through God’s will alone. The sculpture further demonstrates the Renaissance interest in humanism, the intellectual movement that was inspired by the Classical era’s philosophies, ways of seeing the world, and questioning what it is to be human.
The Daura Museum pf Art believes that appreciation of the visual arts across time and cultures is one of the most effective ways to become culturally aware global citizens and build a better world. Subject matter and themes of art often deal with explicit and/or abstracted images related to war and social injustices, life and death, the human figure and human sexuality.
The Daura Museum believes that the diversity of these and other concepts and imagery are expressive of social, cultural, and/or an individual artist’s values, and shed light on the continuity of the Western artistic creativity across the immense span of the human experience.
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