A Bronze Star Is Reborn
By Blake Gopnik
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 29, 2004

The verdict of art history is always fixed. Superstars such as Michelangelo or Rembrandt get off easy. Almost anything they did is automatically declared a masterpiece. Any work that's clearly a real mess is said to be by an assistant or a forger. Wonderful artists who have yet to grab the public eye, on the other hand, have to have their cause defended in detail, case by case.

A National Gallery exhibition called "Verrocchio's 'David' Restored" stands witness for one of the greatest works by one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance -- who happens to be mostly unknown outside specialist circles. If nothing else, this focused show (it's a single famous work surrounded by a half-dozen others that set it in context) makes clear that Verrocchio deserves our close attention.

Andrea del Verrocchio was born into the modest household of a Florentine brickmaker in 1435. By the time he died in 1488, Verrocchio had become one of Italy's most important and admired artists, with workshops in Florence and Venice. Never married, he lived the sober and straightforward life of a well-established craftsman, marred only by manslaughter charges at the age of 17, of which he was acquitted.

Many lesser artworks of his day reveal his influence; some promising younger artists -- Leonardo da Vinci, most famously, but also notable figures such as Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi -- went to him for training. Verrocchio was most touted as a maker of monumental bronzes, but he was also known for his delicate work in precious metal. His first training was as a goldsmith, under the Verrocchio family that gave him his name. He also had some reputation as a painter, a medium he turned to later in his career. His drawings from life are superb things as well; Leonardo's naturalism depends directly on Verrocchio's example.

The statue of David now at the National Gallery, from the important sculpture collection of the Bargello Museum in Florence, is in the United States for the first time since 1940, in part to show off its recent restoration. Some evidence suggests that the current version of Goliath's head, designed by Verrocchio to sit between David's feet, may replace an earlier one that was off to his right. This show tries out that placement of the giant's head.

The bronze was commissioned by the Medici for their Florentine palace sometime in the later 1460s, then sold by them to Florence's town hall in 1476. (Since the family pretty much controlled the civic government, the sculpture's move may have simply been a transfer from one seat of Medici power to another; the payment for it can even be seen as a hidden subsidy of a Medici project using public funds.)

The "David" is a masterpiece of Verrocchio's first mature style, which balances a goldsmith's love of fine detail and a sculptor's interest in impressive forms that fill the space around them.

More than most other sculptors of his day, Verrocchio lets air into his forms -- there's vibrant space between the figure's arms and torso and around its legs. But despite this breaking of the statue's contours, there's still a strong sense that every part relates to every other. Renaissance sculptors were keen on making works that looked equally but differently good from almost any viewpoint. (They faulted painting for offering only a single view.) Verrocchio's "David" is one of the first pieces to live up to that ideal. There's a sense of energy at rest in all the teenage hero's limbs and features; that same sense of poised motion runs through all the statue's forms, seen from any angle.

And yet, for all the little statue's almost monumental elegance of form, there's also lots of potent detail on its surface. After casting "David," Verrocchio worked over almost every inch of him with a sculptor's finest chisels, making sure the piece repaid a good close look as well as one from farther off.

This contrast between a passion for local incident and a love of bold totality makes the "David," and Verrocchio's career, a kind of hinge between a decorative late medieval style and the classicizing plainness that came with Michelangelo.

Or at least that's how it seems, in retrospect, to us.

Look at Verrocchio's "David" as it stands revealed in Washington in 2004, and some of the claims just made for it may spring to mind. But back five centuries ago, in Florence, viewers might have had different ideas about what the piece meant and why it was worth their time. To supplement a purely modern view, The Post has invited three art historians to join me in imagining likely readings triggered by the piece in its day.

It's not that 15th-century Italians necessarily came closer to some final truth about the "David" than we could ever do; it's that some of their insights may still pay dividends in dealing with the work.

Verrocchio's "David" Restored: A Renaissance Bronze From the National Museum of the Bargello, Florence, organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, is at the National Gallery of Art through March 21. Call 202-737-4215 or visit www.nga.gov.