Hello there and welcome back! For this week I am going to take a break from the Brooklyn Museum posts and tell you guys about a really exciting experience I’ve had! I am an Art Education major at Marywood and this week I started doing observations for the first time. I was so excited to get started and I couldn’t have had a better experience! I was observing a past professor of mine who is so incredible and she teaches an AP Art History class at the high school level. So, I figured I would tell you guys about one of the pieces she was covering!

Observing this class was so awesome for me because what she was covering were the pieces I learned about in my first art history class. It reminded me of why I wanted to have an art history minor. The piece I wanted to talk about today is “David” by the Renaissance sculptor Donatello. “David” is a bronze sculpture based on the biblical story of David and Goliath. In this story the young and small David defeats a massive Warrior named Goliath using a slingshot. This story shows the victory of an underdog and so does the statue.

In the statue you can see David with one foot standing on Goliath’s head after the defeat. The statue of David has a very relaxed stance known as contrapposto and has soft, beautiful features that represent the idealization of the time. In David’s hand you can see he is holding the rock he used to defeat Goliath which I think is a fun detail. Seeing this statue again was such a great experience for me because it brought me back to when I first fell in love with art history.

I hope you all loved this post as much as I did and I will see you all next time!

Thanks!

~Marissa