The Beautiful and the Sublime in Michelangelo's "David"

“Whence this creation has arisen - perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.”
- Rg Veda

Why do certain works of art resonate with us and impact us so profoundly? How is it that a series of musical notes or shapes carved out of simple stone can inspire and lift us to a completely different state of being? The transcendental and transformational power of art is the basis for the idea of “artistic genius”. Plato asserted that great art was the product of divine inspiration, of a certain madness that took hold of the artist when the divine creative spirit entered his being, causing him to create in an exalted frenzy that could not be explained or understood rationally. This concept of artistic genius was revived during the Renaissance when artists began to be viewed as more than simply hired craftsmen.

The concept of the divinely inspired artistic genius found it’s archetype in the artist Michelangelo. Giorgio Vasari, in a biography written during Michelangelo’s lifetime, described him as the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance. Indeed, in his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino (“the divine one”). His influence on the art of his time, as well as that on future generations, can hardly be overstated. His paintings include the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, considered by many art historians to be the high water mark of Renaissance painting. As an architect, he designed the dome of the Basilica of St. Peter and the Campidoglio, a public square atop the Capitoline hill in Rome. But for all his triumphs as a painter and architect, it was in sculpture that Michelangelo showed his true genius. This genius was never more evident than in his masterpiece, David. With David, Michelangelo demonstrated the rare ability to combine elements of both the beautiful and the sublime in such a way as to inspire and transport the viewer intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually to a higher plane of existence.

The 18^th century philosopher Edmund Burke proposed that great art relies on the beautiful and the sublime for its effect. The beautiful is that which is well-formed and pleasing to the senses. The sublime is the quality of transcendent greatness beyond the capacity of reason to understand, often inspiring terror and awe. Truly great art must contain both of these elements because if a piece is lacking in beauty it will not have the necessary aesthetic qualities to attract our interest. But if a piece is lacking in awesomeness, it will not inspire the powerful emotional response necessary for it to resonate with us. The sublime also serves the function of momentarily suspending the viewer’s rational thought, allowing one to truly “experience” the piece.

Michelangelo’s David, with its idealized yet strikingly realistic depiction of youth, strength, and masculinity, is beauty personified. David stands relaxed yet alert. He stares to his left at Goliath, his brow furrowed, his gaze resolute. Michelangelo has chosen to depict David at the moment between his conscious decision to fight Goliath and his conscious action. While David definitely exudes strength and masculinity, he is also languid and sensual. David is a man of action as evidenced by the sling and stone in his hands, yet he is also a man of thought and of sensuality. He is the ultimate man - a man who combines intelligence, strength, and sensuality with resolute and virtuous action. In a sense, David can be seen as a philosophical treatise on beauty and virtue. With David, Michelangelo is not saying “here is a virtuous and beautiful man”. He is saying, “This is virtue. This is beauty”. David is a humanist tour-de-force. It asserts that man is indeed, the measure of all things. Man is the supreme expression of beauty. He is the pinnacle of creation. To really get this message across, Michelangelo employs elements of the sublime.

Michelangelo relies on a number of devices to invoke the sublime in this sculpture. First, the monumental size of the statue, being over four meters high, amplifies the grandeur of the statue (could you imagine this statue being four feet high?!). Second is the exquisite realism that Michelangelo managed to coax out of the raw marble. The undercutting around the hair, the veins on the hands, the detailed musculature, and the sense of movement invoked by the form and stance, combine to create a statue that seems to have paused for only a second and may move again at any time. Third are the complex and multi-faceted intellectual elements suggested by the sculpture. The sculpture does not lead the viewer to any unified set of ideals or any specific message. It is both active and passive, stern and sensual, realistic yet idealized. Every viewing, it seems, reveals something different in the sculpture.

David exists just beyond the grasp of our conceptual mind. It is both stunningly beautiful and sublimely awesome. Michelangelo intended this because he wanted to assert that true beauty is a sublime thing that is impossible to really describe or depict. As the Rg Veda says: who knows from whence it came? Who knows its nature? Who knows its limits? Beauty is intellectual and it is physical, it is emotional and it is sensual. It is sometimes delightful and sometimes terrible. It has both an active and a passive nature. Beauty is a force that allows us to transcend our mundane reality. It is the supreme source of inspiration, of love, of passion, and of madness. It transcends conceptual thought so we will never be able to aptly describe it – we have to feel it to know it. Beauty has to be felt. Michelangelo understood this, so instead of simply conceptualizing beauty, he shows us beauty. It is this ability to transcend the realm of the mundane and inspire us to experience the higher reality of beauty that is the true genius of Michelangelo’s David.