Essay about Comparison of Michelangelo8217s and...

Comparison of Michelangelo8217s and Bernini8217s Davids â€Å"The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image.† Michelangelo describes in the above quote what it is like to carve a likeness of a person out of a large block of marble. As we know from seeing his work, he did an excellent job with this task. Bernini did just as fine a job on his, but in a much different way as you will see in the following pages. Michelangelo Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy, a tiny village, owned by the nearby city-state of Florence. His father was the mayor. He attended school in Florence,†¦show more content†¦Frederick Hartt does an excellent job of describing the essence of the statue: â€Å"Throughout the statue, but especially in the head, the conflict between line and form†¦ †¦is intensified and deepened. The features are more deeply undercut than in any of the earlier works, possibly because of the height from which the statue was originally intended to be seen. †¦The enormous eyes †¦seem at once liquid and fiery. The flat planes joining at determined angles underlie all the construction of the David, not only in the squared-off masses of the features but throughout the knotty, bony, sinewy, half- developed, and unprecedentedly beautiful torso and legs. For the first time Michelangelo is able to embody in the quality of a single human body all the passionate drama of a man’s inner nature. The sinews of the neck seem to tense and relax, the veins of the neck, hands and wrists to fill, the nostrils to pinch, the belly muscles to contract and the chest to lift with the intake of breath, the nipples to shrink and erect, the whole pr oud being to quiver like a war horse that smells the battle. But the nature of the battle there is no indication whatever; it is eternal and in every man† (Hartt 112). Once the statue was completed, a committee of citizens and artists convened to decide where the statue