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Donatello's
of
Medici
Bronze
Rule
David
in
and
Judith
as
Metaphors
Florence
SarahBlakeMcHam
For all the individual analyses of Donatello's bronze David
and Judith and Holofernes, these sculptures have rarely been
considered jointly, despite the fact that they were displayed in
coordinated outdoor spaces of the Medici Palace for about
thirty years. I argue here that their iconography was meant to
evoke republican themes, well known to the Florentine elite,
that the Medici aimed to embrace and co-opt.l The associated
meanings of the David and the Judith and Holofernes were
signaled by their related inscriptions. As I shall demonstrate
by reference to Greek and Roman authors, particularly Pliny
the Elder, these two works drew on descriptions of the
Athenian statue group called the Tyrannicides, and on
the writings of the twelfth-century English theologian John
of Salisbury, all well known in fifteenth-century Florence, for
the purpose of creating a visual rhetoric insinuating that the
Medici were defenders of Florentine liberty. These literary
and artistic sources combine with the two sculptures' related
size and material to strengthen the likelihood that the David
and the Judith and Holofernes were intended as pendants.
Together the sculptures conveyed the controversial, selfserving message that the family's role in Florence was akin to
that of venerable Old Testament tyrant slayers and saviors
of their people, symbolically inverting the growing chorus of
accusations that the Medici had become tyrants who had
sucked all real power out of the city's republican institutions.
The Statues' Setting
Donatello's bronze sculptures of Judith and Holofernes (Fig. 1)
and David (Fig. 2), according to evidence recently uncovered
in contemporary sources, stood respectively in the Medici
Palace garden and courtyard by 1469, possibly even as early as
1464-66.2 They remained in these adjoining locations until
1495, after the Medici were expelled from Florence in the
previous year.3 We know that the palace was constructed for
Cosimo de' Medici, between 1445 and the mid-1450s, but
both sculptures are undocumented commissions.4 They were
installed in the palace within a decade after 1457, the
approximate date when Cosimo, his two sons, and their
families moved into the recently completed residence. The
sculptures' status as two of the earliest freestanding Renaissance statues makes the uncertainties of their dates and
patronage particularly tantalizing, because these pieces are
crucial to the reconstruction of the history of Italian Renaissance art.5 Nevertheless, their existence in the Medici Palace
courtyard and garden for about thirty years allows them to be
studied jointly in the context of their placement within the
most public spaces of the palace that served as the de facto
seat of Florentine political power. Investigation of the sculptures reveals a prime and largely unexplored example of how
Cosimo and Piero de' Medici contributed to the creation of a
family imagery in the secular context most closely identified
with it, the newly constructed palace on the Via Larga.6
The bronzes were focal points of the two connected open
spaces, the courtyard and garden (Fig. 3). The axial arrangement of the palace's main entrance and courtyard means that
the David, which was raised on a high base at the center of the
courtyard, was visible even from the street when the main
portal of the palace was open.7 Although there is no certainty
about the precise position of the Judith and Holofernesin the
garden,8 since the garden was just behind the courtyard, the
sculpture could have been visible from the courtyard if it was
situated on the garden-courtyard axis. Nevertheless, as the
courtyard was open to palace visitors and the garden to an
invited group, the two statues were readily accessible to the
desired audience.9
The family's suites were grouped around the palace's most
striking innovation all'antica, the first colonnaded courtyard
of the Renaissance, in which the David was positioned
centrally. The courtyard, whose proportions and regular
shape determined the impressive symmetry of the palace's
plan, established a new type of interior formal space that
came to supplant the exterior loggia on the Medici and other
Florentine palaces as the site of formal receptions and family
rituals. Behind it, the walled garden, with arcaded loggias at
its north and south sides, provided a more private outdoor
area, which was sometimes open to guests to the palace and
used in conjunction with the central court when magnificent
occasions, such as the wedding of Lorenzo de' Medici and
Clarice Orsini in 1469, demanded additional space.'0
The Medici family expended considerable attention on the
decorative program for the courtyard and garden. Complementing the classicizing columns in the courtyard were
sgraffitodecoration of garlands and shields decorated with the
Medici palle (or balls), as well as a series of roundels above
the arcade of the courtyard. These stone roundels, of uncertain date and attribution, seem like large-scale sculptures
derived from ancient gems and incised precious stones
acquired by the Medici. Perhaps they were intended to
remind the visitor of the family's prestigious collection and
interest in antiquity.11 There were ancient sculptures flanking
the interior portals of the garden, notably, two of Marsyas on
either side of the exit to the Via de' Ginori.12
David as a Tyrant Slayer
The recent discovery of the inscription once on the David
("The victor is whoever defends the fatherland. God crushes
the wrath of an enormous foe. Behold! A boy overcame a
great tyrant. Conquer, o citizens!")'3 seems to calm the controversy as to whether the sculpture indeed represents the
young giant slayer, at least on a primary level.14 The inscription does not, however, narrow the range of dates for the
sculpture, which different historians have placed as early as
about 1428-30 and as late as after 1460.15 Most scholars agree,
however, that the Judith and Holofernes probably dates after
DONATELLO'S
DAVID AND JUDITH: METAPHORS
OF MEDICI RULE
1 Donatello,Judith and Holofernes,bronze. Florence, Palazzo
Vecchio (photo: Scala/Art Resource, New York)
Donatello's return to Florence from Padua, in 1453. Since the
statue was recorded in the garden of the Medici Palace by
1469, possibly as early as 1464, it was most likely executed in
the late 1450s or early 1460s and commissioned by Cosimo or
Piero de' Medici.16 If the late dating of the David proves
2 Donatello, David, bronze. Florence, Museo Nazionale del
Bargello (photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource)
33
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3 Attributed to Michelozzo, Medici Palace courtyard, Florence,
view toward garden (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
correct, then it could have been commissioned by the Medici
together with the Judith, but at this point there is insufficient
evidence to confirm the theory.
The historical context of the bronze David provides some
necessary background. Although very different in material
and style from Donatello's earlier marble David (Fig. 4), it
repeats the theme of David triumphantly standing with one
foot on Goliath's decapitated head. Because David's identity
as a victorious warrior has become so familiar to us through
such later sculptures as Michelangelo's colossal David, we
overlook that before Donatello's marble sculpture almost
every representation of David interpreted him in other ways,
as a king, prophet, writer of the Psalms, or ancestor of
Christ.17
Documents indicate that in 1416 the marble David was
transferred from the workshop at the cathedral of Florence
and installed in the Palazzo della Signoria before a pattern of
heraldic lilies painted expressly to complement it.18 Its site at
the seat of government against a backdrop of symbolic lilies,
the emblems of Florence's alliance with the Angevin dynasty,
argues that the theme was interpreted in political terms.
Supporting evidence was recently found by Maria Monica
Donato, who discovered two manuscript accounts that describe the Palazzo della Signoria in the early fifteenth century.
They allude to an inscription, "To those who bravely fight for
the fatherland god will offer victory even against the most
terrible foes."19 The manuscripts validate H. W. Janson's
earlier, unproved speculation that this inscription might have
been added to the sculpture by 1416, and that Donatello then
recut the figure to emphasize a new political role for David as
a defender of Florence by baring his left leg and removing the
scroll formerly used to identify David as a prophet.20
The placement of the bronze David in the courtyard of the
Medici Palace with an inscription of patriotic exhortation
should be seen as a self-conscious allusion to the earlier
marble analogue and its inscription. The marble David was at
the time still standing in the priors' meeting hall in the
Palazzo della Signoria, which made the Medici's identification with a symbol of the Florentine Republic all the more
potent. The decision to situate an emblem of Florentine
4 Donatello, David, marble. Florence, Museo Nazionale del
Bargello (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
republican government in their palace could be understood
as a sign that the Medici were closely connected to that regime
and continued its ideals. Nevertheless, at the same time it
represented an unprecedented appropriation by a single
family of a corporate symbol of the state and informed the
cognoscenti that true power resided several hundred meters
north of the Palazzo della Signoria.
Judith as a Tyrant Slayer
David and Judith are partners in meaning, which provides a
rationale for their pairing. Both were Old Testament heroes
and traditionally linked as saviors of the Jewish people in
DONATELLO'S
Jewish and Christian imagery (as in an early medieval fresco at
the church of S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, or on Lorenzo
Ghiberti's East Doors for the Baptistery, where the statuette of
Judith is placed in a niche next to the relief of David Killing
Goliath).21This partially explains their choice for the public
spaces of the Medici Palace, but there were additional reasons
for linking the two.
Unlike David, Judith had not been politically associated
with Florence, but the textual source, the apocryphal Old
Testament Book of Judith, certainly lent itself to a political
interpretation and was written to inspire Jewish patriotism.22
In the medieval period Jewish and Christian writers alike
interpreted Judith as a moral, religious, and political heroine.
In Christian symbolic thought her victory over Holofernes
was elaborated as the triumph of virtue, specified variously as
self-control, chastity, or humility, over the vices of licentiousness and pride. In visual representations of Judith and
Holofernes, which are usually found among manuscript
illustrations of cycles of the virtues, she stands powerful over
Holofernes, holding his sword in one hand and his head by
the hair in the other. Associations with these virtues meant
thatJudith even came to be regarded as a type of the Virgin
and of the Church.23
In the bronze by Donatello, the depiction of Judith and
Holofernes continues these traditions. Judith's virtue is indicated by the demure clothing and veil that cover her from
head to toe while Holofernes, in contrast, is almost naked.24
His nudity and drunkenness and the cushion on which he is
propped identify Holofernes as a figure of Lust and Licentiousness, whereas Judith represents Chastity.25 The medallion
Holofernes wears, which has swung around to his slumping
bare back, depicts a galloping horse, symbolic of Pride or
Superbia, the vice traditionally defeated by Humility, represented byJudith.26
Judith's valiant act of decapitating Holofernes is dramatically emphasized by Donatello, who created the first (and
only) representation in monumental sculpture of this moment. Equally unprecedented is Donatello's narration of the
actual killing. Rather than interpreting the confrontation
betweenJudith and Holofernes in the traditional emblematic
language of Judith standing motionless over the fallen Holofernes, Donatello for the first time depicted the grisly detail
of Judith's delivering a second blow to Holofernes, the one
that results in his decapitation. The canopy she has ripped
from Holofernes' bed (and later triumphantly presents in the
Temple atJerusalem) is wound through his hair in her hand
and around her upper back and thighs (Figs. 5, 6).27 The
visual effect of these features encourages the spectator to
circle the sculpture in order to appreciate gradually how the
complex intertwining of the protagonists' bodies connotes
their physical intimacy, and finally to confront the psychological nuances of Judith's expression of horrifying calm and
steadfast resolve (Fig. 7). Judith raises Holofernes' scimitar
high over her head and is poised to attack again. Vestiges on
the weapon indicate that it was entirely gilded, and so this
dramatic fulcrum of the sculpture must have shone in the
garden sunlight at the statue's pinnacle, emphasizing the
impending movement of Judith's arm.28 To ensure a deadly
DAVID AND JUDITH: METAPHORS
OF MEDICI RULE
35
5 Donatello,Judith, side view (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
cut, Judith steadies Holofernes' unconscious form by straddling his bare chest, bracing his head against her thigh,
standing on his wrist, and grabbing his hair tightly. She has
already opened a huge gash in his neck, and his head is
collapsed unnaturally on his shoulders.
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.'
I"
7 Donatello,Judith, detail: head ofJudith (photo: Alinari/Art
Resource)
(
The inscription recorded on the base-"Kingdoms fall
i?!
_~-_ ,.
_:,- _ _or=f
.....
~ z ,
ISto
*Florence,
through luxury [sin], cities rise through virtues. Behold the
neck of pride severed by the hand of humility"-underscores
the moral meaning of the decapitation.29 The exhortation to
the viewer to focus on the physical evidence of the truncated
neck is unusual and important (this will be explored later). A
second inscription connects its reference to contemporary
"The salvation of the state. Piero de' Medici son of
Cosimo dedicated this statue of a woman both to liberty and
fortitude, whereby the citizens with unvanquished and
constant heart might return to the republic."30 Together they
echo the rallying cry for liberty against the evils of tyrannical
rule carved on the base of the David.
Relationship to the Athenian Tyrannicides
The Judith and Holofernesand the David evoke references to
tyrannicide well known to the Medici and to other members
of the educated elite in Florence through ancient and
contemporary texts. The fifteenth-century audience was familiar with accounts of two celebrated instances of tyrannicide in
"_lis;~*- , -the ancient world: the first, the attempted murder of Hippias
in Athens, was hailed as establishing democracy in the west;
the second, the assassination of Julius Caesar in Rome, was a
of continuing controversy. Considered a treacherous
', > .~subject
murder by some-for example, Dante31-others, like Boccaccio, viewed Caesar's killing by Brutus and Cassius as a
6 Donatello,Judith, back view (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
legitimate tyrannicide.32
DONATELLO'S
DAVID AND JUDITH: METAPHORS
OF MEDICI RULE
37
9 Tyrannicide:Aristogeiton,Roman copy in marble of original
Greek bronze. Naples, Museo Nazionale (photo: Alinari/Art
Resource)
8 Tyrannicide:Harmodios,Roman copy in marble of original
Greek bronze. Naples, Museo Nazionale (photo: Alinari/Art
Resource)
The antityrannical inscriptions on the base of both sculptures by Donatello suggest a link to these renowned historical
episodes and to the statue that became the most famous
monument to tyrannicide in the West. The Tyrannicides(Figs.
8, 9), the monumental bronze group of Harmodios and
Aristogeiton, heroically nude and advancing forward, ready
to strike, was erected at public expense in the Agora to honor
them for overthrowing the tyrannical regime that led to the
establishment of democracy in Athens (despite the fact that
they botched the attempt).33 The pair was given full honors as
heroes, and their statue was considered such a symbol of the
city and its liberty that the Athenians legislated that no other
sculptures could be erected near it in the Agora. When the
Persians conquered Athens in 480-79 B.C.E., they acknowledged the statue's symbolic importance to the city by carrying
it off as a trophy. The Athenians immediately commissioned a
replacement to stand in the Agora, and when the original
Tyrannicidesgroup was recaptured more than a century later
and returned to Athens, it was placed alongside the second
version of the theme in Athens's civic center.34
Only after Athens had been conquered by Rome was an
exception made to the edict honoring the Athenian tyrannicides by solitary prominence in the Agora: in 44 B.C.E.
Athenian citizens voted to erect statues of Brutus and Cassius
next to the Tyrannicides,thereby paying tribute to their slaying
of Caesar in the same terms as the commemoration of
Harmodios and Aristogeiton.35 General descriptions of the
sculpture of Harmodios and Aristogeiton survived into the
Renaissance in writings by authors such as Pliny, Pausanias,
and Philostratus. As one or more copies of each of these
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relevant ancient author's texts were housed in the S. Marco
Library in the fifteenth century, the monument must have
been known to the Medici family.36
Pliny's Natural History, in one of its most detailed accounts
of any single Greek or Roman work of art, provided the fullest
commentary. Pliny called the heroes and their sculpture
symbols of Athenian democracy. He suggested that the
Tyrannicides were among the first recorded examples of
bronze sculpture, thus making them a landmark in the
invention of that artistic form.37 He further recounted how
the brave deeds of Harmodios and Aristogeiton were immortalized by an inscription on the sculpture's base. Pliny
specified that their portrait sculpture was installed at public
expense in the Agora so that the feats of the tyrant slayers
might live in the memory of Athenian citizens. He claimed
the precedent started the fashion in many municipalities of
decorating public squares with statues of heroes atop bases
inscribed with their identities. He related the precedent to a
subsequent practice of installing statuary in the private spaces
of residences.38 Pliny embellished the story of the tyrannicides with dramatic human interest by recounting the ancillary episode of the harlot Laena, who was tortured to death
rather than reveal the identities of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, and of the monument of a tongueless lion erected in
her honor by the grateful Athenian state.39 Ghiberti summarized Pliny's version of the story in his Commentarii,and Leon
Battista Alberti's treatise on architecture repeated all major
features of Pliny's description.40
In its own right, the epigram on the Athenian statue's base
was just as celebrated as the sculptures. Attributed to the
famous poet Simonides, it extolled the tyrannicides and their
liberation of Athens with the words, "A marvelous great light
shone upon Athens when Aristogeiton and Harmodios slew
Hipparchus."41 Several drinking songs (scholia) derived from
the inscription remained popular for centuries and were used
to encourage patriotic emulation of the heroism of the tyrannicides.42 The poetic inscriptions on the bases of the sculptures by Donatello, which distinguish the figures as exempla
by invoking spectators' attention to their feats, may be
inspired by that precedent.43
The statue group was widely copied in later Greek and
Roman art; often, as in the case of the Brutus and Cassius
statues mentioned above, imitations of the Tyrannicideswere
motivated by the goal of rallying patriotism in response to
some threat to political freedom.44 There are a number of
extant monumental variants, and renditions proliferated in
copies and in versions on coins and vases and in relief
sculpture. Characteristic aspects of the figures' gestures and
poses were transferred to other heroes, such as Theseus, as a
sign of their identification with the political import of the
Tyrannicides.45
The installation of the David and the Judith in the courtyard
and garden of the Medici Palace recalls Pliny's allusion to the
fashion of erecting sculptures in private residences that
derived from the fame of the Tyrannicides.The sequence of
these spaces in the palace suggests the atrium and peristyle of
Roman houses, basic features of domestic architecture emphasized by the Roman writer Vitruvius.46 In his treatise on
architecture completed by 1452, Alberti elaborated on Vitru-
vius's description and connected these spaces to the sort of
public civic area where the Tyrannicideshad been installed:
... the principal member of the whole building is that
which I shall call the courtyard with its portico, to which all
the other members must correspond, as being in a manner
a public marketplace to the whole house....
(5.17)47
Places of public reception in houses ought to be like
squares and other open spaces in cities ... in the center
and most public place where all the other members may
readily meet. (5.2)48
The incriptions of the Judith and Holoferneswere later effaced
and then recarved with pointed reference to the reinstated
republic when it was transferred from the Medici Palace to
the ringhiera, or rostrum once attached to the west side of the
Palazzo della Signoria. This history suggests the intensity of
the statue's political associations and may reflect awareness
of how the original Tyrannicideswere carted off as spoils by the
victorious Persians to be reinstalled as a symbol of triumph in
the public space of their capital.49
The sculptures in the Medici Palace repeat features of the
Athenian sculpture reflected in works of art and described in
the literary sources. Like it, they represent tyrannicide through
the medium of large-scale bronze sculpture of figures in
dramatic action. The correspondences between the David, a
bronze freestanding nude in the tradition of Greek heroic
statues, situated in the courtyard of the Medici Palace, the
analogous space in private residences to the public square of
cities, reinforce the association. Judith's gestures of raising
the sword over her head with one arm while thrusting forward
her other, drapery-covered arm to grab the hair of her victim
conflate the poses of the Athenians' arms as had the gestures
of earlier heroes like Theseus and may reflect a limited
knowledge of the Tyrannicides'sactual physical appearance,
pieced together from literary references and imitations of the
group in the visual arts, or else fortuitously inspired by their
laconic evidence into a partial resemblance.
Historical Influence of John of Salisbury's Policraticus
Another equally famous precedent regarding tyrannicide
apparently influenced the fifteenth-century sculptures. Donatello's unprecedented emphasis on the physical acts of murder and decapitation seems to reflect the contemporary
impact ofJohn of Salisbury's Policraticus.The Policraticuswas a
treatise about government written in the twelfth century by an
English theologian who became bishop of Chartres. It stood
at the center of impassioned debate throughout Europe three
hundred years later because it provided the most notable
theoretical justification for the legitimacy of tyrannicide
written by a Christian authority.50 The Policraticus had long
enjoyed a special status as the earliest elaborate medieval
exposition of political theory. Since it was based extensively
on the Bible and patristic literature, the Policraticus was
construed to represent the viewpoint of the Church. The
treatise played a prominent role throughout the late Middle
Ages and Renaissance in the popular genre of literature
known as the "Mirror of Princes," that is, treatises written to
instruct rulers.51John of Salisbury's theories about the nature
DONATELLO'S
of the state directly engaged issues of political legitimacy and
made the Policraticus influential on legal theory, philosophy,
and political thought.52 For more than a century the treatise
was considered the most authoritative work on government
throughout Europe; it yielded its unchallenged supremacy to
Thomas Aquinas, who drew extensively onJohn of Salisbury's
theories and increased their circulation.53 After the midthirteenth century, the constitutional and political problems
of legitimacy grew ever more urgent as new governmental
units coalesced, and more attention focused on the Policraticus. Its influence was so significant in Italian legal and
political circles that a fourteenth-century Bolognese jurist
wrote a reference index to its contents.54
The Policraticus became widely known as its many moralizing stories proved a popular source for the teaching exempla
cited by friars in their sermons. Finally, because the treatise
drew extensively on ancient authors, interest in it was further
stimulated by the incorporation of pagan classical literature
into the curriculum of universities.55 In some circles the
authority of the Policraticus was further enhanced by the
misconception that the title represented the author's name
and he was Greek.56 An excerpt, which John of Salisbury
called the "Institutio Traiani" and claimed was written by
Plutarch, was widely diffused independently. Regarded as a
major ancient source on tyranny and tyrannicide, it was the
only text attributed to Plutarch known and taught during the
fourteenth and much of the fifteenth century.57
John of Salisbury's discussions of tyranny and tyrannicide
had enduring popularity in Italy for additional reasons. He
provided information and a theoretical context with which to
assess the rulers of ancient Greece and Rome, making his
work important to authors like Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Petrarch's De remediis utriusquefortunae contains several dialogues on the nature of tyranny.58 In the De casibus virorum
illustrium, published in 1371, Boccaccio devoted several chapters to tyrants in the ancient world.
But John's commentary had more specific implications in
Florence, one of the few Italian cities that remained a
republic by the end of the fourteenth century, after most
other Italian communes had evolved into semimonarchical or
even tyrannical governments. Florentine claims for the city's
foundation during the Roman Republic and other associations to that venerable precedent were mainstays of civic pride
and propaganda. This made the assassination of Caesar and
arguments about whether tyrannicide was justified topics of
particular significance.
The Policraticusproposed the legitimacy of tyrannicide in a
series of explicit arguments unparalleled in Western thought,59
with a key book of the treatise headed "That by the authority
of the divine book it is lawful and glorious to kill public
tyrants, so long as the murderer is not obligated to the tyrant
by fealty...."60 When the Florentine chancellor Coluccio
Salutati wrote a treatise called De tyrannoin 1400, he naturally
drew on the Policraticus. Salutati's text is the first by a major
Italian political figure to focus on tyrannical government and
the legitimacy of tyrannicide. His objective in writing it was to
defend the reputation of Dante, who, rather than according
immortality to Cassius and Brutus as tyrannicides, had deemed
them murderers and relegated them to the lowest circles of
the Inferno.61 Unlike John of Salisbury, who had considered
DAVID AND JUDITH: METAPHORS
OF MEDICI RULE
39
Caesar a tyrant, Salutati argued that Caesar was a benevolent
despot. Therefore, according to Salutati, Caesar's assassination was not a legitimate tyrannicide, and Dante was right to
put Cassius and Brutus in Hell.62
Not surprisingly, the numerous assassinations of contemporary political leaders in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century
Europe and the tenuous hold on power of many more kept
attention focused on the Policraticus'sjustifications of tyrannicide. In 1407 the murder of Louis, duke of Orleans, brother
of Charles VI, king of France, by John the Fearless, duke of
Burgundy, thrustJohn of Salisbury's theories again into the
spotlight. In a move that galvanized all of Europe, the duke of
Burgundy denied that he had committed any crime, thereby
skirting the obvious charge that the killing enhanced his own
chance of succeeding to the throne of France. He contended
that, as a loyal servant of the crown, he had been honorbound to rid the country of a detestable tyrant who had
perverted French royal institutions. His stance had grave
theoretical consequences for rulers anywhere in Europe and
direct ramifications not only for France and Burgundy but
also for England and Italy. Henry V of England soon thereafter married Catherine, the daughter of the French king, and
the duke of Orleans left as his widow Valentina Visconti, the
daughter of the duke of Milan.
To argue his case, the duke of Burgundy hired Jean Petit, a
distinguished theologian at the University of Paris, who
argued on the duke's behalf that the murder of a tyrant was
the praiseworthy obligation of a good Christian citizen. To
buttress his stance that the Church sanctioned such assassinations, Petit drew on Thomas Aquinas and other theologians,
but the defense rested onJohn of Salisbury's explicit theories
about the legitimacy of tyrannicide. Petit presented the
position in a series of tracts entitled Justificatio Ducis Burgundiae.63
The outraged son of the assassinated duke of Orl6ans
demanded that their validity be judged by a Council of the
Faith, attended by doctors and masters of the University of
Paris. This distinguished group vehemently debated the issues
throughout 1413 and 1414. The eminent theologian Jean
Gerson represented the duke of Orl&ans's position that his
father had been unjustly murdered.64 In 1414, the synod
condemned the ideas of Jean Petit and required that all
copies of the Justificatio be burned.65 Nevertheless, at the
Burgundian court it was preserved as a precious document,
recopied, and over the course of the century incorporated
into the manuscript and ultimately the printed histories of
Burgundy and of France.66
In response to the synod's decision, the duke of Burgundy
brought his case before John XXIII, the claimant to the papacy
not supported by the king of France. John first assigned a
committee of Italian cardinals to make a ruling; he named
them because of their experience, as Italians, with political
assassinations.67 John XXIII subsequently decided that the
matter should be put before the full-scale church council at
Constance. There it was debated at great length, with Gerson
again representing the position of the family of Louis of
Orleans.68 Nevertheless, the Council of Constance broke up
in 1418 without ruling against the duke of Burgundy.69
Burgundian partisans immediately retook control of the
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royal government in Paris. Soon thereafter the University of
Paris published a long letter excusing itself for the Council
of the Faith's decision, on the basis that hardly any impressive
masters of theology remained in Paris during its tenure. Royal
letters were composed specifically disavowing the work of
Gerson. The assassination of the duke of Burgundy in 1419
made his culpability a moot point but intensified the controversy about the succession of power in France and Burgundy,
as well as the theoretical basis of legitimate government and
citizens' rights to take action against unlawful rulers.
Practical repercussions continued to be felt in Italy. Charles
of Orleans, the son ofValentina Visconti and the assassinated
duke, laid claim to various territories in northwestern Italy,
including the duchy of Milan. Charles died in 1465, but the
title of the house of Orleans to Milan did not. The French
invasion of Italy at the end of the fifteenth century was
mounted to enforce it. During the fifteenth century, other
attempts to overthrow existing Italian governments sprang
from native soil. The most significant occurred in Rome,
Milan, and Florence; one plot achieved its goal of killing a
head of state.70 In 1476 the Olgiati Conspiracy in Milan
resulted in the murder of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza.71Just a
couple of years later the Pazzi Conspiracy in Florence succeeded in the assassination of Giovanni de' Medici, although
his brother, Lorenzo, the head of state, escaped. Unlike their
Milanese counterparts, the Pazzi conspirators did not justify
their deeds by rhetorical allusions to legitimate tyrannicide,
but other Florentines did so for them. In 1478-79, Alamanno
Rinuccini wrote the treatise "De libertate," in which he
likened the Pazzi conspirators to the heroic teams of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, Cassius and Brutus, and the Milanese
conspirators.72
More than recurrent political crises, killings, and problems
of succession kept alive the themes with which John of
Salisbury had grappled. Riccardo Fubini has pointed out that
the theological and political interpretation of a state's legitimate authority-the fundamental question left unresolved at
in Florentine fifteenthParis and Constance-festered
to
and
led
successive crises such as
century political thought
the rebellion against Piero de' Medici in 1466 and the Pazzi
Conspiracy. As he noted, the editorial debates leading to a
new Latin edition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in 1463
demonstrate the continuing importance of the controversy.73
The Sculptures in Relation to the Policraticus
Let us now return to the focus of this essay and examine how
the two sculptures by Donatello relate to John of Salisbury's
discussions of the state and tyrannicide. To begin with the
obvious: they both depict tyrannicides. Judith's killing of
Holofernes is made unprecedentedly dramatic. In addition to
being the first monumental depiction of the episode, it is
rendered as a freestanding sculpture whose physical tangibility heightens the explicit horror of the freeze-frame rendition
of a murder in progress. That the tyrannicides are legitimate
and morallyjustified is underscored by the inscriptions on the
David and the Judith.
The graphic aspect ofJudith's pause between two blows as
she decapitates Holofernes and the inscription's focus on the
severed head relate to the peculiarly precise anatomical
characterization that is John of Salisbury's original contribu-
tion to the long-standing analogy between the body and the
state. He made clear that the prince is the state's head, and
that it ineluctably followed that the tyrant, or prince who
misruled, must be killed so that the head is severed from the
body.74 Although he credited Plutarch's "Institutio Traiani"
as his authority, John of Salisbury seems to have invented the
details of the metaphor himself.75
John contended that tyrannicide was a duty if it set people
free for the service of God.76 In support of his position, he
cited various examples of the oppression of the Jews in the
Old Testament and their deliverance by the slayers of these
tyrants; by far the most important savior wasJudith, who killed
the general of an army threatening her people.77 In the same
chapter,John extolled David as a counter example. According
to John's philosophy of fealty, David was bound by oath as a
subject Saul, and so unlike Judith, who owed no allegiance to
Holofernes, David could not rightfully murder Saul, even
though he was a tyrant. John argued that David's patient,
passive resistance and decision to leave Saul's fate to God
represented the moral course of action in such cases.78
Nevertheless, John realized that not all tyrants could be
peaceably overcome and offered specific advice about deposing them by force. According toJohn, the most expedient way
to destroy tyrants was to beseech God's retribution, but he
explicitly sanctioned human dissimulation and treachery
when they served the cause.79 In this regard, his most
prominent case was again that of Judith, whose beauty and
charms were enhanced by God,John tells us, so that she could
entice Holofernes into a drunken stupor and kill him:
Let me prove by another story that it is just for public
tyrants to be killed and the people thus set free for the
service of God. This story shows that even priests of God
repute the killing of tyrants as a pious act, and if it appears
to wear the semblance of treachery, they say it is consecrated to the Lord by a holy mystery. Thus Holofernes fell a
victim not to the valor of the enemy but to his own vices by
means of a sword in the hands of a woman; and he who had
been terrible to strong men was vanquished by luxury and
drink, and slain by a woman. Nor would the woman have
gained access to the tyrant had she not piously dissimulated her hostile intention for that is not treachery which
serves the cause of the faith.... For this is shown by her
words ... "Bring to pass, Lord," she prayed, "that by his
own sword his pride may be cut off, and that he may be
caught in the net of his own eyes turned upon me....
Grant to me constancy of soul that I may despise him, and
fortitude that I may destroy him. For it will be a glorious
monument of Thy name when the hand of a woman strike
him down." . . . she who had not come to wanton, used a
borrowed wantonness as the instrument of her devotion
and courage.80
Donatello's bronze representsJudith as chaste and humble,
although the sensuous implications of her encounter with
Holofernes and the ways in which she guilefully ensnared him
are amply suggested by their intimate physical positioning:
she stands on his wrist and straddles his chest.81
The topicality of John's treatise helps to explain the
commission for the first monumental, three-dimensional
DONATELLO'S
DAVID AND JUDITH: METAPHORS
OF MEDICI RULE
41
statue of the story of Judith and Holofernes. The brutal
decapitation reflects his citation of Holofernes' murder as the
prime example of justified killing of an overlord who disobeyed God's laws. John singled out the sword as the suitable
agent of retribution against a ruler who unlawfully used it
against his people: "For whosoever takes up the sword
deserves to perish by the sword."82 The unprecedented
portrayal of a decapitation in progress is the physical embodiment ofJohn's theory about the actual separation of the head
from the body politic, that is, the severing of the tyrant from
his state in a whollyjustifiable murder.83 Even though David's
killing of Goliath was not cited as an example of tyrannicide in
the Policraticus, Donatello's depiction of the boy standing
victorious, sword in hand, over the decapitated head of
Goliath easily relates toJohn's ideas. Like Holofernes, Goliath
was the major warrior of an army menacing the Jews.
Holofernes' killing by a woman and Goliath's death at the
hands of a boy could only have been accomplished with God's
help. Despite the fact that David killed Goliath with a stone,
the sword, the meansJohn recommended to slay a tyrant, and
Goliath's severed head are emphasized. The inscription
originally on the statue's base and the statue's inevitable
association with the nearby Judith and Holofernes reinforced
the appropriateness of interpreting the killing of Goliath as
another illustration ofjustified tyrannicide.
The David and the Judith and Holofernes, sculptural centerpieces of the two most public spaces in the Medici Palace, thus
seem to have been coordinated in a program that was
calculated to advertise to invited guests that Cosimo and his
family were protectors of liberty-in a period when that was
very much in question and in need of corroboration. Their
control of Florence was sufficiently threatened that in 1458
Cosimo secretly consulted with Duke Francesco Sforza of
Milan about sending troops to Florence should conspiring
against the regime explode into fighting. Cosimo next masterminded a series of changes that weakened traditional republican governmental structures. These were confirmed by a
sham parlamento, in which the intimidated citizenry surrounded by armed soldiers voted to consolidate the family's
hold on power. Cosimo and then Piero ruled for the next
eight years, taking harsh measures to suppress any opposition.
In this period they had a great need to deflect charges of
tyranny from themselves. Donatello's statues conveyed that
message powerfully by suggesting instead that the Medici
family should be seen in the flattering light of celebrators,
even preservers, of Florentine liberty against any threat, a
self-serving political strategy that many Florentines would
have considered outrageous.84
Related Aspects of the Courtyard's Decoration
This reading of the statues is reinforced by their thematic and
formal links to the other aspects of the decoration of the
garden and the courtyard. Two ancient statues of Marsyas,
restored in the fifteenth century, flanked the doors leading
from the garden into the Via de' Ginori. One, now lost,
represented a seated Marsyas prior to his torture.85 The other,
depicting the torture of Marsyas, is presently in the Uffizi (Fig.
10). Recently Francesco Caglioti convincingly reattributed its
restoration to Mino da Fiesole.86 He also argued that these
two statues were included in the garden because the theme of
10 Marsyas,Roman sculpture with restorations attributed to
Mino da Fiesole, marble. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (photo:
Alinari)
Marsyas could be understood as representing liberty. In
support of that argument, he cited an unpublished commentary by Giovanni Nesi on Aristotle's NicomacheanEthics, which
42
ART BULLETIN
MARCH 2001 VOLUME LXXXIII
NUMBER
1
11 Attributed to Donatello, roundel of Centaur, stone. Medici
Palace courtyard (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
12 Attributed to Donatello, roundel of Daedalus and Icarus,
stone. Medici Palace courtyard (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
Nesi directed to the young Piero de' Medici, the son of
Lorenzo.87
The roundels of the courtyard's upper walls, which may
have been designed by Donatello, further develop the meaning of the program.88 One depicts centaurs (Fig. 11), cited by
Dante as incapable of successfully governing because of their
supposed fault of pride.89 They therefore connect to the
statues' allusions to prideful tyrants overcome by virtuous
deliverers who restore liberty to their people. Another roun-
13 Attributed to Donatello, roundel of Triumph ofBacchus,
stone. Medici Palace courtyard (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
del represents Daedalus and Icarus (Fig. 12). The proud
Icarus is posed nude atop a high pedestal, recalling prominent features of the statue of David below. According to
Francis Ames-Lewis, this similarity also establishes a link
between the interpretation of the David and the roundel. He
sees them together representing the results of contemplation
of truth in a Neoplatonic sense, as the soul rises from the
terrestrial state to the divine state personified by Icarus.90 In
this light, the statue and roundel together could be seen as
validating the "truth" of the cycle. A third roundel, often
considered to represent the Triumph of Eros, depicts a scene
very close to that on Goliath's helmet, relating the roundel to
the statue by Donatello (Fig. 13). Both the helmet decoration
and the roundel have been identified in this way because of
their compositional connections with a sardonyx cameo
traceable in the fifteenth century to the collections of Pietro
Barbo, and now in Naples.91 However, art historians had not
taken into account that the gem was also identified as a
Triumph of Bacchus, an interpretation applied by Patricia
Ann Leach to the roundel and helmet decoration both.92 She
argued that in this context the triumph suggested not only a
Christian meaning of salvation but also a political sense of
liberty, because of Boccaccio's description of how Bacchus or
Liber brought liberty (libertas) to mankind.93 Wendy Stedman
Sheard extended this line of interpretation by noting that
Bacchus can be considered a god of military triumph and as
such personifies the connection of peace and prosperity with
the reign of a legitimate ruler, in this case the Medici.94
Artistic Patronage Converted to Political Power
The interpretation of the statues and courtyard decoration
accords with the claims of humanists seeking Cosimo's favor,
such as the Sienese Francesco Patrizi. In his "Ad Cosimum
Medicem virum excellentissimum," written about 1434, Pa-
DONATELLO'S
trizi flattered Cosimo as a new Brutus for his symbolic slaying
of the tyrant Rinaldo degli Albizzi, or Caesar:
Like Brutus, he, fearing for the Roman flower
of Freedom, struck, and broke the tyrant's power.95
Not many humanists adopted this rhetoric. But it served the
Medici well to create an imagery that advertised the family's
stance as defenders of Florence. The prominent precedent of
Donatello's marble David in the Palazzo della Signoria ensured that the bronze David would have been immediately
associated with the cause of Florentine liberty and the defeat
of enemies of the state. By erecting Donatello's bronze David
in the public space of their palace's courtyard and inscribing
its base with an antityrannical message, the Medici were
usurping this symbol of the republic and inverting its meaning-making themselves, not the republic, tyrant slayers like
David. AlthoughJudith was a new symbol to Florence,John of
Salisbury's citation of her as a paradigmatic tyrannicide made
the Old Testament heroine a second exemplar. The bronze
sculpture's unprecedented stress on Judith's encounter with
Holofernes as a dramatic narrative of murder and decapitation derives from John's famous metaphor of the tyrannical
prince as the head of the body politic who must be sundered
from it by decapitation.
The multiple connections among the Donatello sculptures,
John of Salisbury's Policraticus,and the famed ancient statues
of the Tyrannicidesreveal another way in which Cosimo and
Piero created their family imagery, knowledgeably converting
to their own aggrandizement venerable historical precedents
in addressing a simmering contemporary controversy. By so
doing, the Medici manipulated republican imagery to establish the family's political propaganda, here subverting the
charge of tyranny often leveled against them to their own
purpose.96 The message was subtle and coexisted with more
obvious and conventional interpretations of David andJudith
as Old Testament heroes honored by Christian tradition.
Scholars have demonstrated many examples of how the
Medici employed a strategy of commissioning works of art
that veiled their political thrust in a context of acceptable
religious and moral themes. The program discussed here
provides another instance of the family's carefully calculated
and sophisticated use of artistic patronage to further its goal
of maintaining power in Florence.97
Sarah Blake McHam, professorof art history, Rutgers University,
editedLooking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture and contributed
an essay on public sculpture to the volume. She is also the author of
The Chapel of St. Anthony at the Santo and the Development
of Venetian Renaissance Sculpture [Departmentof Art History,
VoorheesHall, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. 089011248, [email protected]].
Frequently Cited Sources
Ames-Lewis, Francis, 1989, "Donatello's Bronze David and the Palazzo Medici
Courtyard," Renaissance Studies 3, no. 3: 235-51.
DAVID AND JUDITH: METAPHORS
OF MEDICI RULE
43
1389-1464 (Oxford:Clarendon
, ed., 1992, Cosimo"ilVecchio"de'Medici
Press).
Coville, Alfred, Jean Petit: La question du tyrannicide au commencementdu xve siecle
(Paris: Auguste Picard, 1932).
Hyman, Isabelle, Fifteenth Century Florentine Studies: The Palazzo Medici and a
Ledgerfor the Churchof San Lorenzo (New York: Garland, 1977).
Janson, H. W., The Sculpture of Donatello, 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979).
The Statesman's Book ofJohn of Salisbury, Being the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Books,
and Selectionsfrom the Seventh and Eighth Books of thePolicraticus, trans. and ed.
John Dickinson (NewYork:AlfredA. Knopf, 1927).
Ullman, Berthold Louis, and Philip A. Stadter,ThePublicLibraryofRenaissance
Florence: Niccoli Niccoli, Cosimo de' Medici and the Library of San Marco,
Medievoe umanesimo, vol. 10 (Padua:Antenore, 1972).
Notes
Some of this researchwasfirstpresented at the WesleyanRenaissanceSeminar
in December 1994 and later revisedin a paper given at the annual meeting of
the RenaissanceSocietyof Americain Bloomington, Indiana, in 1996. I would
like to thank the participants at both for their comments. I want to
acknowledge especially the assistanceof Professor Susan McKillop,who first
brought to my attention John of Salisbury's reference to Judith in the
Policraticusand for encouraging my research. I would also like to thank
ProfessorsRoger Crum,Tod Marder,JohnPaoletti,and Debra Pincus for their
many helpful comments about earlier drafts of this essay, and Professors
Jocelyn Penny Small and John Kenfield for their bibliographic assistance.
Unless otherwise noted, translationsare mine.
1. This interpretationwasfirstadvancedby Bonnie A. Bennett and DavidG.
Wilkins,Donatello(Oxford: Phaidon, 1984), 85. Roger Crum, "Retrospection
and Response:The Medici Palace in the Service of the Medici, c. 1420-1469,"
Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1992, considered the sculptures and
paintings at the palace together, arguing that they should be seen as
celebrationsof the victoryof humilityover pride and of concord over discord.
Crum argued more specificallythat the Davidserved to connect the Medici to
a general messageof libertyand antityrannyin an article that he brought to my
attention after reading an earlier draft of this essay; see his "Donatello's
Bronze Davidand the Question of Foreign vs. Domestic Tyranny,"Renaissance
Studies10, no. 4 (Dec. 1996): 440-50. I thank him for his comments and the
citation. I believe that the Davidand the Judithshare this meaning and suggest
in this essayliteraryand artisticsources that support the argument.
2. ChristineM. Sperling, "Donatello's Bronze 'David'and the Demands of
Medici Politics," BurlingtonMagazine134 (1992): 218-24, published a manuscriptshe discoveredin the BibliotecaRiccardiana,Florence, which recordsan
and specifies
inscription for the David as well as for the Judithand Holofernes
was located in the garden of the palace. Sperling
that the Judithand Holofernes
argued that the manuscriptcould be dated between 1466 and 1469, and thus
offered the earliest terminusante quemfor the installation of the Judith and
there. Sperling is the firstscholar to analyzethese points in relation
Holofernes
to Donatello's sculptures.However,she wasunawarethat Paul OskarKristeller,
IterItalicum,2d ed. (London: WarburgInstitute, 1967), 115, had earlier noted
the citation in another manuscriptin the Biblioteca Corsini, Rome, and that
Cecil Grayson,"Poesie latine di Gentile Becchi in un codice bodleiano," in
Studi offertia RobertoRidolfi,ed. Berta Maracchi Biagiarelli and Dennis E.
Rhodes (Florence:L. S. Olschki, 1973), 285-303, had published still another
version of it that is in the Bodleian Library,Oxford. Grayson'sdemonstration
that the manuscriptwas written by Gentile Becchi negates Sperling'sattempt
to argue that Filelfo was its author and, on that basis, date the Davidca. 1430.
Her other arguments,that the sculpturewascommissioned in response to the
Milanese threat to Florence at that time and that it relates in style to other
sculpturesby Donatello in the late 1420sand early1430s, are takenfrom H. W.
Janson, "Lasignificationpolitique du Daviden bronze de Donatello," Revuede
l'Art39 (1978): 33-38, and are inconclusive. Crum, 1996 (as in n. 1), makes a
more convincing case that, ratherthan alluding to a single threat of tyrannical
aggression, the Medici disingenuously intended the David to suggest their
defense of Florence from all danger of foreign or domestic tyranny,despite
the realitythat many considered their own rule tyrannical.
Following Sperling's article, Francesco Caglioti, "Donatello, i Medici e
Gentile de' Becchi:Un po' d'ordine intorno alla 'Giuditta'(e al 'David')di Via
Larga," pt. 1, Prospettiva75-76 (July-Oct. 1994): 14-22, published several
more versions of the 15th-centurymanuscriptcitation of the inscriptions on
the David and on the Judith.As Caglioti noted, a date as early as 1464 is
suggested by the context in which the record is found, a letter of condolence
on Cosimo de' Medici'sdeath (1464) writtento his son Piero on Aug. 5, 1464. I
thank ProfessorCagliotifor sending me a copy of this article and its sequels.
3. Luca Landucci, Diariofiorentinodal 1450 al 1516, ed. Iodoco Del Badia
(Florence:G. C. Sansoni, 1883), 121.
4. On the palace's architecture, see Hyman; and Brenda Preyer,
di Firenze,ed.
"L'architetturadel PalazzoMedici," in II PalazzoMedici-Riccardi
GiovanniCherubini and GiovanniFanelli (Florence:Giunti, 1990), 58-75.
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MARCH 2001 VOLUME LXXXIII
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1
5. Other noteworthy features include the total nudity of the David, the
as a group in dramaticaction, and the
conception of the Judithand Holofernes
installationof life-size statues in a residential setting. To my knowledge, they
are the firstRenaissanceexamples of these phenomena.
Caglioti (as in n. 2), 19-49, made the most recent contribution to the
He argued
controversyabout the date and patron of the Judithand Holofernes.
that Donatello began the commission for Cosimo by 1457, put it aside during
his sojourn in Siena (1457-61), and then completed the sculpture after his
return to Florence and before his death in 1466. Previoushistorians divided
into two camps about the commission, some followingJanson, 202-5, who, on
the basis of Milanesi's reading of an elliptical reference regarding the
purchase of bronze in Siena for Donatello in a document of 1457 (Siena,
Archivio dell'Opera Metropolitana), contended that Donatello began the
as a civic commission for that city and then completed it
Judithand Holofernes
for the Medici. Others, led by Volker Herzner, who retranscribed the
document and read it differently,argued that it alluded to another commission entirely,namely,a reliquarybust of Saint Giuletta ("Donatello in Siena,"
Institutesin Florenz15 [1971]: 178-85; and
Mitteilungendes Kunsthistorischen
"Die 'Judith'der Medici," ZeitschriftfirKunstgeschichte43
[1980]: 159-63), and
commissionhad nothing to do with Siena, but was
that the JudithandHolofernes
instead a Medici commission.
6. See Crum, 1992 (as in n. 1), for a comprehensive analysisof the palace.
The frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Medici Palace Chapel have received
much attention in regard to their political meaning; see the recent discussion
and bibliographyin Rab Hatfield, "Cosimo de' Medici and His Chapel," in
Ames-Lewis,1992, 221-44; Diane Cole Ahl, BenozzoGozzoli(New Haven:Yale
UniversityPress, 1996), 81-119, 219-20; and Roger Crum, "RobertoMartelli,
the Council of Florence, and the Medici Palace Chapel," Zeitschrift
fur
59 (1996): 403-17.
Kunstgeschichte
7. The Davidstood at the center of the courtyard,which is on axis with the
main portal of the palace and visible from the street. Its original base by
Desiderio da Settignano has been lost, but it was described by Giorgio Vasari.
Speculation has centered on its appearance and height, and how these
affected spectators'view of the Davidfrom ground level in the courtyardand
from the windows of the piano nobileof the palace. On these issues, see
Ames-Lewis,1989, 235-51, who first presented a reconstruction of the base;
and FrancescoCaglioti, "Donatello, i Medici e Gentile de' Becchi .... ," pt. 3,
80 (Oct. 1995): 15-58, where a more convincing reconstruction is
Prospettiva
offered.
8. Ames-Lewis,1989, 240-41, first analyzed the uncertainties surrounding
the original placement of the statue in the garden. Previously,scholars had
assumedthat it waslocated on axiswith the Davidin the courtyard;see Hyman,
195. Recently, Francesco Caglioti, "Donatello, i Medici e Gentile de' Becchi....," pt. 2, Prospettiva78 (Apr. 1995): 22-55, expanded Ames-Lewis's
was located at the north
arguments,contending that the Judithand Holofernes
end of the garden.
Cagliotialso challenged the long-standinginterpretationthat the Judithand
functioned as a fountain in the Medici garden. He argued that the
Holofernes
base of the statue,which had been considered a replacementwhen the group
was transferredto the Palazzodella Signoria, had been its base in the garden
of the Medici Palace. In addition, he contended that the location of the Judith
in that garden was not on axis with the Davidbut instead at the
and Holofernes
north end of the garden and that a fountain without statuarystood on the site
on axis with the Davidthat historianshad traditionallyassigned to the Judith
See his diagram,31.
andHolofernes.
The recent restoration of the Judith and Holofernesrevealed that the
supposed waterspoutsin the center of each relief of the three-sidedbase had
never been opened, and confirmed the observationoccasionallymade earlier
that the openings at the corners of the cushion on which Holofernes is
propped could have been plugged with now-lostbronze tassels, rather than
serving as waterspouts;see Antonio Natali, "Exemplumsalutatispublicae," in
Donatelloe il restaurodellaGiuditta,ed. Loretta Dolcini (Florence: Centro Di,
1988), 27.
9. On Cosimo's quasiofficialuse of his palace as the site of government
consultations,see Nicolai Rubinstein, "Cosimo optimuscives,"in Ames-Lewis,
1992, 13, where the acerbic remarksof GiovanniCavalcanti'sIstoriefiorentine,
ed. Guido di Pino (Milan: A. Martello, 1944), 20, are quoted: "... the
governing of the city took place more at dinners and in privatestudies than at
the town hall." The Terzerime,a panegyricwritten ca. 1459, recounted how
Cosimo and Piero often entertained visitorsat the palace; see Rab Hatfield,
"Some Unknown Descriptions of the Medici Palace in 1459," Art Bulletin52
(1970): 240, where fol. 26v is discussed.
10. On the wedding, see Hyman, 167. It was also availableto receive guests
after dinners, as for example when Galeazzo Maria Sforza visited in 1459,
described in the Terzerime,41v, in Hatfield (as in n. 9), 236; and in a letter in
idem (as in n. 6), 227.
11. On these stone roundels, see Ursula Wester and Erika Simon, "Die
Reliefmedallionsim Hofe des PalazzoMedici zu Florenz,"JahrbuchderBerliner
Museen 7 (1965): 15-91; on their relation to gems in the Medici collections, see
Gennaro Pesce, "Gemme medicee del Museo Nazionale di Napoli," Rivista del
Reale Istituto d 'Archeologiae Storia dell'Arte5 (1935-36): 50-97.
12. On the two sculptures of Marsyas, see Francesco Caglioti, "Due 'restauratori' per le antichita dei primi Medici: Mino da Fiesole, Andrea del Verrocchio
e il 'Marsia Rosso' degli Uffizi," pt. 1, Prospettiva72 (Oct. 1993): 17-42, and pt.
2, 73-74 (Jan.-Apr. 1994): 74-96.
13. "Victorest quisquispatriamtuetur./ FrangitimmanisDeus hostis iras./
En puer grandem domuit tiramnum. / Vincite, cives!" For variantspellings,
see Caglioti (as in n. 2), 39 nn. 30, 31. Sperling (as in n. 2) discovered the
inscriptionconnected to the Davidrecorded in a 15th-centurymanuscriptand
introduced it into the art historicalliterature.
14. Alessandro Parronchi, "Mercurioe non David," in Donatelloe il potere
(Bologna: Cappelli;Florence: Il Portolano, 1980), 101-15, first suggested the
reidentificationof the statue as Mercury,andJohn Pope-Hennessy,"Donatello's Bronze David," in Scrittidi storiadell'artein onoredi FedericoZeri(Milan:
Electa, 1984), vol. 1, 122-27, supported it. Ames-Lewis,1989, 238-39, and
others have convincingly proposed that the identities of David and Mercury
were instead conflated to create a multivalent image, different features of
which could be seen from the ground and from the upper floor of the Medici
Palace, thereby nuancing the sculpture's meaning to its audience. Patricia
Ann Leach, "Images of Political Triumph: Donatello's Iconography of
Heroes," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University,1984, 53-154, most fully explored
the underlying motives for merging David and Mercury in 15th-century
Florence.
15. On the vexed question of dating, see, for example,Janson (as in n. 2),
33-38, who proposed a date of ca. 1430, seconded most recently by Sperling
(as in n. 2). On the other hand, FrancisAmes-Lewis,"ArtHistoryor Stilkritik?
Donatello's Bronze David Reconsidered," Art History 2 (1979): 139-55,
presented a serious case for a date as late as ca. 1460. For a convincing rebuttal
of the literary and political arguments made by Sperling in favor of an early
date, see Crum, 1996 (as in n. 1), 440-50. Although the weight of evidence
now favorsthe late dating, the issue is not yet definitivelyresolved.
16. If, as some historians have argued, the purchase of bronze in Siena in
1457 is connected with the Judithand Holofernes
commission, then the statue
was under way by that date. For further speculation about the commissioner
and date, see n. 5 above.
17. Michelangelo'scommission for the colossal Davidis the fulfillment of a
project originallyawardedin 1463 to Agostino di Duccio to carve a statue of
the Old Testamentfigure for one of the buttressesof the Duomo in Florence.
The contract was rescinded by the Opera del Duomo in late 1466, by which
time Agostino had completed little, if any,carving.CharlesSeymour,Michelangelo'sDavid: A Searchfor Identity(Pittsburgh:University of Pittsburgh Press,
1967), 36-38, suggested that Donatello was providing the design for Agostino's execution and that Donatello's death in 1466 led to the contract's
cancellation. If Donatello's bronze Daviddates as late as ca. 1460, then these
two commissions are roughly coincident, but we know nothing useful about
the intended appearance of Agostino's sculpture and cannot characterizeits
interpretationof David.
18. For the documents, see Giovanni Poggi, II Duomodi Firenze:Documenti
sulla decorazione
della chiesae del campaniletratti dall'Archiviodell'Opera,ed.
Margaret Haines, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Florence: Medicea, 1988) vol. 1, docs.
425-27. On the history of the sculpture,see Janson, 3-7.
19. See MariaMonica Donato, "Herculesand Davidin the EarlyDecoration
of the Palazzo Vecchio: Manuscript Evidence," Journal of the Warburgand
Courtauld
Institutes54 (1991): 83-98. The inscriptionreads:". .. statuaDavidis
marmoreacum funda in manu: cui adscriptumpro patriadimicantibusetiam
adversusterribilissimoshostes deus prestatvictoriam."This inscriptionis very
similar to that in a late 16th-century guidebook by Laurentius Schrader,
Monumentorum
Italiae, quae hoc saeculoet a christianispositasunt, libriquatuor
(Helmstadt:IacobusLuciusTransylvanus,1592), fol. 78v,earlierdiscoveredby
Janson, 4. The difference lies in the last words,which in Schrader'stext read
"dii prestant auxilium." The pagan implications of the phrase in Schrader
occasioned doubts among scholarsthat the inscriptioncould have dated from
the 15th century.The inscriptionuncovered by Donato refers to one god and
removesthat problem.
20. SeeJanson, 3-7. Other scholarshave disputedJanson'sargumentsabout
the successivestagesof David'sidentityand the statue'srecarving,arguingthat
it was alwaysintended for the Palazzodella Signoria and not recut. For these
points and bibliography,see Luciano Bellosi, "I problemi dell'attivitagiovaed. Alan
nile," in Donatelloe i suoi: SculturafiorentinadelprimoRinascimento,
Phipps Darr and Giorgio Bonsanti (Detroit: Founders Society, Detroit Institute of Arts;Florence:La CasaUsher, 1986), 47-54.
21. On examples of Judith with David, see Herzner, 1980 (as in n. 5),
164-69; and Mira Friedman, "The Metamorphoses of Judith," JewishArt
Journal12-13 (1986-87): 235-39.
22. Modern theologians analyzing the text have pointed out its anachronisms and historical inconsistencies and argued that it was written as an
allegory of the Jewish people to spur pride in their sense of identity.See The
and Critical
BookofJudith:GreekTextwith an EnglishTranslation,Commentary,
Notes,ed., trans.,and annotated Morton S. Enslin and Solomon Zeitlin,Jewish
ApocryphalLiterature,vol. 7 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972), 1.
23.Judith's role as a paragon of Christianvirtues such as chastity,temperance, justice, fortitude, wisdom, and humility was established in the early
of Prudentius, the very influential Christian
Middle Ages by the Psychomachia
epic written in 405. This spurred a large number of literary and visual
interpretations of the theme, and an equally extensive secondary literature in
the modern period. For a brief synthesis of the Christian interpretations of
Judith, see Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in
Italian BaroqueArt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 282-89; and
Frank Capozzi, "The Evolution and Transformation of the Judith and
Holofernes Theme in Italian Drama and Art before 1627," Ph.D. diss.,
DONATELLO'S
University of Wisconsin, 1975, 3-22. For the additional connotations of
situatinga sculptureof this theme in a garden setting, see MatthewG. Looper,
"PoliticalMessagesin the Medici Palace Garden,"Journalof GardenHistory12,
no. 4 (1992): 255-68. For an exploration of the popularityof the theme, see
the recent study by MargaritaStocker,Judith:SexualWarriorWomenand Power
in Western
Culture(New Haven:YaleUniversityPress, 1998).
24. The rim of roughlywoven cloth, riding lower on her forehead than her
veil, which has usually been discussed as an indication of Donatello's
technique of casting from real cloth (see Bruno Bearzi, "Considerazionidi
tecnica sul San Ludovicoe la Giudittadi Donatello," Bollettinod'Arte16 [1950]:
119-23), is relevantto the tale ofJudith. It could hint at the sackclothin which
she and the otherJews of Bethulia dressed as they beseeched God to deliver
them from Holofernes' siege of their town. It further indicates the modesty
with which the widowedJudith typicallydressed, disguised by the finery and
jewels with which she covered herself to seduce Holofernes.
25. The three Bacchanalian reliefs on the statue's base reinforce this
meaning; see EdgarWind, "Donatello'sJudith: A Symbol of 'Sanctimonia,'"
and CourtauldInstitutes1 (1937): 62-63.
Journalof theWarburg
26. The medallion is described inJanson, 203.
27. BookofJudith,13: 6-10, 16: 19-20 (as in n. 22), 153, 175-76: "Andgoing
to the bedpost which was at Holofernes's head, she took down from it his
sword, and nearing the bed she seized hold of the hair of his head and said,
'Give me strength this day,Adonai God of Israel.'And with all her might she
smote him twice in the neck and took his head from him. And she rolled his
body from the couch and took the canopyfrom the poles.... Judith dedicated
to God all Holofernes's possessions ... and the canopy which she had taken
for herself from his bed, she presented to Adonai as a votive offering."
Generally,this more dramaticrendition is not common until the 17th century,
as in paintings by Caravaggioand ArtemisiaGentileschi;see Garrard(as in n.
23), 290-91, 307-36. A rare earlyexample is Guariento'sversionfor the chapel
of the CarraraPalace in Padua, now in the Musei Civici,Padua (first cited by
Herzner, 1980 [as in n. 5], 144-45).
28. An anonymous early 16th-centurypainting of the Executionof Savonarola
in the Museo di S. Marco, Florence, records the group on the ringhiera,or
rostrum, outside the Palazzo della Signoria after 1495, representing it as
entirely gilded. Conservation reports indicate that it was not, but the
painting's exaggeration makes clear the brilliantimpression it must have had
in the sun; seeJanson, 201.
29. "Regnacadunt luxu, surguntvirtutibusurbes:/ Caesavides humili colla
superba manu."
30. "Salus Publica. Petrus Medices. Cos. fi. Libertati simul et fortitudini
hanc mulierisstatuam,quo cives invicto constantique animo ad rem publicam
redderent, dedicavit."
31. Dante, Inferno,canto 4, line 123, and canto 34; Paradiso,canto 6.
32. In Boccaccio's unfinished commentary on Dante's Commedia,he described how Caesarseized control of the government against Roman law and
made himself perpetual dictator. See Boccaccio, Il Comentoalla Divina
ed. Domenico Guerri,Scrittorid'Italia,vols. 84-86 (Bari:Giuseppe
Commedia,
Laterzaand Sons, 1918), vol. 1, 205, vol. 2, 49.
33. Harmodios and Aristogeiton succeeded in slayingonly Hipparchos,the
younger brother of the tyrant Hippias. The significance of the date of the
killing was given additional resonance by Pliny in the NaturalHistory,who
claimed that it coincided with the day on which the kings were expelled from
Rome. See the quotation of the passagein n. 38 below.
34. There are authoritativeaccounts of the group by Sture Brunnsaker,The
ofKritiosand Nesiotes(Lund:Hakan Ohlssons Boktryckeri,1955);
Tyrant-Slayers
and Michael W. Taylor,TheTyrantSlayers:TheHeroicImagein FifthCenturyBC
AthenianArtandPolitics,Monographsin ClassicalStudies, 2d ed. (Salem, N.H.:
Ayer, 1981). For a succinct analysiswith bibliography,see Sarah P. Morris,
Daidalosand the Originsof GreekArt (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress,
1993), 297-308. For a recent account of the monument in relation to its site,
see Ulf Kenzler, Studienzur Entwicklungund Strukturdergriechischen
Agorain
und klassischer
archaischer
Zeit,EuropaischeHochschulschriften,ser. 38, vol. 72
(Frankfurt:Peter Lang, 1999).
35. The only contemporarysource is CassiusDio, RomanHistory47.20.4. For
further information, see ElizabethRawson,"Cassiusand Brutus:The Memory
Studiesin Greekand RomanHistorical
of the Liberators,"in Past Perspectives:
Writing,ed. I. S. Moxon, J. D. Smart, and A. J. Woodman (Cambridge:
Cambridge UniversityPress, 1986), 107; and Antony E. Raubitschek, "The
Internazionale
di Epigrafia
Brutus Statue in Athens," in Atti del terzoCongresso
Grecae Latina (Rome: "L'Erma"di Bretschneider,1959), 15-21. No description of the statuesof Brutusand Cassiusappearsto have been preserved.
36. For the availabilityof these texts, see Ullman and Stadter, 216, nos.
791-92 (Pliny), 260, no. 1171 (Philostratus),261, no. 1186 (Pausanias).See
Brunnsaker (as in n. 34), 33-39, for a complete list of ancient authors who
allude to the sculptures of Harmodios and Aristogeiton. The historical event
was described by many authors; the most important sources, according to
ibid., 1-3, are Aristotle,Thucydides,Plutarch,Cicero, and Seneca.
is Pliny's NaturalHistory,
The most comprehensive text on the Tyrannicides
although even Pliny does not offer a complete physical description of the
sculpture group. Cosimo owned a 13th-century manuscript of the Natural
Historyprocured for him by Niccolo Niccoli in Liibeck (listed in Ullman and
Stadter as nos. 791-92). Cosimo's sons, Giovanni and Piero, each commissioned an illuminatedversion.All three manuscriptsare now in the Biblioteca
DAVID AND JUDITH: METAPHORS
OF MEDICI RULE
45
Laurenziana,Florence. Cosimo's manuscriptis Plut. LXXXII.1;those owned
by his sons are Plut. LXXXII.3and Plut. LXXXII.4.
37. The citation of the Tyrannicides
stands out in Pliny's accounts of the
development of bronze sculpture because it is so early in date. He otherwise
traced the firstbronze sculpturesand the firstpaintingsno earlier than the era
of Phidias, decades after the creation of the Tyrannicides(Natural History
36.15).
38. According to the NaturalHistory34.17, from TheElderPliny'sChapters
on
theHistoryofArt,trans.KatherineJex-Blakeand annot. Eugenie Sellers, 2d ed.
(Chicago:Argonaut, 1968), 14-15: "The Athenians were, I believe, introducing a new custom when they set up statues at the public expense in honor of
Harmodios and Aristogeiton,who killed the tyrant.This occurred in the very
year in which the kings were expelled from Rome. A refined ambition led to
the universaladoption of the custom, and statues began to adorn the public
places of every town; the memories of men were immortalized, and their
honors were no longer merely graven on their tombstones, but handed down
for posterityto read on the pedestals of statues. Later on the rooms and halls
of privatehouses became so many public places, and clients began to honor
patrons in this way";and in the NaturalHistory34.70 (Jex-Blakeand Sellers,
55-57): "Praxitelesalso, although more successful and consequently better
known as a worker of marble, created admirableworks in bronze.... Other
worksof his are ... statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the Slayersof the
Tyrant.These were carried off by Xerxes, king of the Persians,and restored to
Athens by Alexander the Great after his conquest of Persia."
39. Pliny particularlypraised the ingenuity of Amphicrates' sculpture of
Laena. He explained that the Athenianswanted to honor Laena'sbraverybut
that they were unwillingto commemoratea harlot,so resorted to a play on her
name and commissioned a statue of a lioness. They stipulated that Amphicratesshould carve the animalwithouta tongue so that Laena'sheroic choice
of silence would long be remembered (NaturalHistory34.72).
40. Lorenzo Ghiberti, I commentarii
1.6.8, ed. Lorenzo Bartoli (Florence:
Giunti, 1998), 55-56, my translation:"I believe that the Athenians were the
first to set up statues in public of the tyrannicidesHarmodios and Aristogeiton. It was done in the same Olympiad that the kings were expelled from
Rome. From that point on very human ambitions led to the practice of
installingstatuary... as an ornament in all cities to commemorate throughout
time the memory of men and of the honors they had gained, and the practice
1.6.33
began of inscribing the bases [of the monuments] ...." Commentarii
to Praxiteles:"Praxiteles
(62), again following Pliny,attributesthe Tyrannicides
was very happy and famous, and created the most beautiful worksin bronze
... during the reign of Claudiushe also made the Venus,which was in marble
and of the most perfect art, and ... HarmodiosandAristogeiton
theTyrannicides,
which was carried off by Xerxes and then returned to the Athenians by
Alexander the Great,after he had conquered the [capital] city of Persia."
Leon BattistaAlberti,De reaedificatoria
7.16, in the context of the invention
of statues, wrote, "Accordingto Aristotle, the first statues to be set up in the
Athenian forum were those of Hermodorus [sic] and Aristogiton, who had
originally delivered that city from tyranny.Arrian the historian recalls that
Alexander returned these statues to Athens, after they had been removed to
Susa by Xerxes"; Alberti, On the Art of Building in TenBooks,trans.Joseph
Rykwert,Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1988), 240. On 398 n. 184 discussing this passage, the authors point out that
AlbertimistakenlyclaimsAristotleas his source instead of Pliny,NaturalHistory
34.17.
41. The inscription was recorded by Hephaestion, Handbookof Meter;see
LyricPoets
John MaxwellEdmonds,LyraGraeca;BeingtheRemainsofAll theGreek
from Eumelusto TimotheusexceptingPindar,3 vols. (London: William Heinemann; NewYork:G. P.Putnam'sSons, 1931), vol. 2, 377. On the impact of the
tyrannicidein Greekhistoryand literature,see CharlesW.Fornara,"The Cult
of Harmodios and Aristogeiton,"Philologus14 (1970): 155-80. On reflections
of the event in folk tales,see M. Hirsch, "Die athenischen Tyrannenm6rderin
Geschichtsschreibungund Volkslegende,"Klio20 (1926): 126-67.
42. See Victor Ehrenberg, "Das Harmodioslied," in Polis und Imperium:
ed. KarlFriedrich Stroheker and AlexanderJohn
Beitragezur altenGeschichte,
Graham(Zurich:Artemis,1965), 253-64; and Taylor(as in n. 34), 51-77. Such
songs had so widespreadan influence that, for example, in performances of
Aristophanes' plays, characters who were meant to be identified with the
tyrannicidessang the "Harmodios"and took the pose of his statue. See ibid.,
195.
43. Donato (as in n. 19), 98, in her discussion of the marble Davidpointed
out that this type of poetic verse was an innovation in inscriptions on
15th-centuryworksof art.
44. See Morris (as in n. 34), 301, for a number of examples that seem
politicallymotivated.
45. For the popularityof the depiction of the Tyrannicides,
see Taylor (as in
n. 34), 147-97; and Morris (as in n. 34), 300-308, 349-50. For a specific
discussion of copies of the group, see W.-H. Schuchhardt and Charles
Landwehr,"Statuenkopiender Tyrannenmorder-Gruppe,"
JahrbuchdesDeutschen ArchdologischenInstituts, Athen 101 (1986): 85-126. Taylor (as in n. 34),
78-158; and Morris (as in n. 34), 301-2, discussed how the poses of the
Tyrannicides were adapted in depictions of other mythological heroes like
Herakles and Theseus and actual historical personages like Kallimachos. The
association of Theseus with the tyrannicides is particularly significant as
Theseus is the mythical founder of Athens and became a personification of its
freedom. On Theseus, see Frank Brommer, Theseus:Die Taten des griechischen
46
ART BULLETIN
MARCH 2001 VOLUME LXXXIII
NUMBER 1
Heldenin derantikenKunstundLiteratur(Darmstadt:WissenschaftlicheBuchgesellschaft,1982).
46. See Hyman, 186-202.
Translatedinto Italian by
47. Leon BattistaAlberti, TenBookson Architecture,
ed. Joseph Rykwert
Bartoliand intoEnglishbyJamesLeoni,Venetian
Cosimo
Architect,
(London:A.Tiranti,1955), 105.Alberti'sremarkswerecitedin Hyman,198.
48. Alberti (as in n. 47), 84, cited in Hyman, 198.
49. It also reflectsa more general, frequentlyreiteratedtheme of the Natural
History:that the proper site for statues was in the public realm, where they
served their rightfulpurpose of edifying citizens by reminding them of heroic
deeds. Pliny'sanecdote (NaturalHistory34.93) about the bronze sculpture of
Herakles near the Rostra stands as a paradigm for his position that public
displayof power and splendor must be reserved for the state. Pliny described
three inscriptionson the bronze. One said that it had been part of the booty
taken by the general Lucius Lucullus, and another that it was dedicated,
according to a decree of the Senate, by Lucullus'sson while still a ward, and
the third, that a public officialhad caused it to be restored to the public from
privateownership.Plinyconcluded the anecdote, "So manywere the rivalries
connected with this statue and so highly wasit valued."
50. See Diane Bornstein, "Reflectionsof PoliticalTheory and PoliticalFact
in Fifteenth-CenturyMirrorsfor the Prince," in MedievalStudiesfor Lillian
HerlandsHornstein,ed. Jess B. BessingerJr.and Robert R. Raymo (New York:
New York University Press, 1976), 77-85. On the presence of John of
Salisbury'streatisein the libraryat S. Marco,see Ullman and Stadter,195, no.
625. I would like to thank ProfessorSusan McKillopfor bringing the treatise
and its presence in the library to my attention. For McKillop'swork on
Medicean imagery, see "Dante and Lumen Christi: A Proposal for the
Meaning of the Tomb of Cosimo de' Medici," in Ames-Lewis,1992, 245-301,
and her forthcoming book.
Cosimo himself owned a copy of "Epistula ad Traianum,"or "Institutio
Traiani,"the supposed letter to Trajanfrom Plutarch,whichJohn of Salisbury
may have writtenhimself but claimed as the ancient authorityfor his theories
about the state as an organism. It is integrated into the prologue and the first
bk. 5, and providesthe frameworkfor that book and
chapter of the Policraticus,
the following one, but it also circulated as an independent text. On the
controversiesabout its authorship,see Tilman Struve,"The Importanceof the
Organismin the Political Theory of John of Salisbury,"in TheWorldofJohnof
Salisbury,ed. Michael Wilks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 305-6. For
Cosimo's ownership of the "InstitutioTraiani,"see Ullman and Stadter,144,
no. 170, 310. For the history of the doctrine of Christas the head of the body
of the Church and its application to medieval theories of kingship, see Ernst
H. Kantorowicz,TheKing'sTwoBodies:A Studyin MediaevalPoliticalTheology,
6th
ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 193-232. For a cogent
summaryof the history of the classicaltraditionof equating the human body
with the commonwealth and the medieval identification of the human
body with the Church as well as the state, see Leonard Barkan,Nature'sWorkof
Art: TheHumanBodyas Imageof the World(New Haven:Yale UniversityPress,
1975), 63-79. John of Salisburywas the first to elaborate this long-standing
analogyinto a lengthy and full-scaleanatomyof the anthropomorphicstate.
Although she did not explore the relationship, Susan L. Smith cited the
in connection with a Renaissanceimage ofJudith in her article "A
Policraticus
Nude Judith from Padua and the Reception of Donatello's Bronze David,"
Comitatus
25 (1994): 72.
51. On the popularity of this sort of literature throughout the medieval
period, see Bornstein (as in n. 50), 77-85.
52. EphraimEmerton, Humanismand Tyranny:Studiesin theItalian Trecento
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925), 33-119, analyzed its
impact on Italian political thought. W. Ullmann, "The Influence of John of
Salisburyon MedievalItalianJurists,"in TheChurchand theLaw in theEarlier
Middle Ages: SelectedEssays (London: Variorum Reprints, 1975), 383-92
(reprinted from EnglishHistoricalReview59 [1944]); and idem, "John of
und
Salisbury'sPolicraticusin the Later Middle Ages," in Geschichtsschreibung
Festschrift
fur HeinzLowezum 65. Geburtstaged. K.
geistigesLebenim Mittelalter:
Hauck and H. Mordek (Cologne: Bohlau, 1978), 519-45, traced its impact on
legal theory.
53. HaroldJ. Berman, Law and Revolution:TheFormationof theWestern
Legal
Tradition(Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard UniversityPress, 1983), 278-79. The
writingsof Thomas Aquinaswere thoroughlyrepresented in the Libraryof S.
Marco.They constitutedthe largestsingle block of manuscriptsdonated to the
libraryby Cosimo de' Medici. See Ullman and Stadter,21, 310-13.
54. Ammon Linder, "The Knowledge of John of Salisbury in the Late
Middle Ages," Studi Medievali,ser. 3, 18, no. 2 (1977): 900, discussed the
Sariberiensis
Tabula,seu indexrerummemorabilium
quaesunt in PolicraticoJohannis
byJohn Calderini,which became enormouslypopular throughout Europe.
55. Linder (as in n. 54), 893-94.
56. Ullmann, 1975 (as in n. 52), 385.
57. Linder (as in n. 54), 899. See n. 50 above.
58. In one of the dialogues, the "De occupata tyrannide,"Petrarch,who
annotated his own manuscript of Pliny's Natural History extensively, recounted
with approval the tyrannicide accomplished by Harmodios and Aristogeiton.
On Petrarch's manuscript of Pliny, now in the Bibliotheque Nationale de
France, Paris, see Pierre de Nolhac, Petrarque et l'humanisme, rev. ed., 2 vols.
(Paris: Honore Champion, 1965), vol. 1, 51, vol. 2, 70-77.
59. R. Rouse and M. A. Rouse, "John of Salisbury and the Doctrine of
Tyrannicide," Speculum42 (1967): 693-709.
60. John of Salisbury, Policraticus: Of theFrivolitiesof Courtiersand theFootprints
8.20, ed. and trans. Cary Nederman (Cambridge:Cambridge
of Philosophers,
UniversityPress, 1990), 207-9.
61. Ronald G. Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads:The Life, Worksand Thought of
ColuccioSalutati(Durham,N.C.:Duke UniversityPress, 1983), 368-69.
62. For further analysisand a translationof the De tyranno,see Emerton (as
in n. 52), 49-116.
63. See Coville; and Bernard Guen6e, Un meurtre,une societe:L'assassinat du
duc d'Orleans, 23 novembre1407 (Paris: Gallimard, 1992).
64. The proceedings were published as ActaConciliiParisiensisin the edition
of Jean Gerson's Operaomnia, ed. Louis Ellies du Pin, 5 vols. (Antwerp:
Sumptibus Societatis, 1706), vol. 5, 49-342. Petit'sJustificatio Ducis Burgundiae
is included there, 15-42, as is the Acta in Concilio Constantiensi, 341-1012.
65. Coville,497.
66. Ibid., 135-77.
67. Guenee (as in n. 63), 258-60. The proximate cause of this practical
experience and legal expertise was the assassination in 1412 of Duke
Gianmariaof Milan,heir of GiangaleazzoVisconti,but equallyrelevantwasthe
earlier Milanesehistory of acknowledgedtyrantslike Bernab6Visconti,which
had alreadyraised the issues of what persons and means were authorized to
end a tyrant'sreign.
68. Cosimo de' Medici and other Florentines attended the Council of
Constance motivated by ardent support of John XXIII, who had made the
Medici papal bankers.John was deposed at the Council of Constance and
offered refuge in Florence. He wassubsequentlyaccorded the rare honor of a
tomb in the Baptisteryof Florence, created by Donatello. On these issues, see
Sarah Blake McHam, "Donatello's Tomb of Pope John XXIII," in Life and
Death in Fifteenth-CenturyFlorence,ed. Marcel Tetel, Ronald G. Witt, and Rona
Goffen (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989), 146-73, 232-42. In
addition, a record of the debates between Gerson and Petit in Paris and
Constanceis contained in the OperaomniaofJohn Gerson,a copy of which was
in the Libraryof S. Marco;see Ullman and Stadter,175, nos. 435-37.
69. Bernhard Bess, "Die Lehre vom Tyrannenmordauf dem Konstanzer
36 (1916): 1-61.
Konzil," ZeitschriftfiirKirchengeschichte
70. Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, ed.
Frederick Ignatius Antrobus, 40 vols. (London:John Hodges, 1891), vol. 2,
216-37, provides a succinct account of Stefano Porcari'sattempt to kill Pope
Nicholas V and end papal rule in Rome. Porcari claimed that he wanted to
reinstatea republic in the city of Rome modeled on that of ancient Rome.
71. Bortolo Belotti, II drammadi Gerolamo
Olgiati(Milan:L. F.Cogliatidel Dr.
Guido Martinelli, 1929), provides a detailed account of the Milanese conspiracy.The three conspirators,GiovanniAndreaLampugnani,GerolamoOlgiati,
and CarloVisconti,were inspiredby the teachingsof the court humanistCola
Montano.They were convincedof their legitimateright to rid Milanof Sforza,
whom they considereda tyrant,and invokedthe model of heroic Romanslike
Cassiusand Brutuswho had alsobeen willingto die for the benefitof the state.
72. Rinuccini's treatise is translatedin Renee Neu Watkins,Humanismand
Liberty: Writings on Freedomfrom Fifteenth-CenturyFlorence (Columbia,
S.C.:
University of South Carolina Press, 1978), 193-224. Rinuccini considered
Lorenzo de' Medicia tyrant.Tellingly,he has Alietheus, the interlocutorcalled
"the Truthful," speak the following words: "In all Italy ... there is no city
[Florence] that has so energeticallyand enduringlychampioned the cause of
liberty.... Thus did they [acopo and Francesco dei Pazzi] undertake a
glorious deed, an action worthy of the highest praise. They tried to restore
their own liberty and that of the country.... Men of sound judgment will
always rank them with Dion of Syracuse, Aristogiton and Harmodius of
Athens, Brutus and Cassius of Rome, and in our own day, Giovanni and
GeronimoAndrea of Milan" (195-96).
On the Pazzi Conspiracy,see Riccardo Fubini, "La congiura dei Pazzi:
Radici politico-sociali e ragione di un fallimento," Lorenzode' Medici,New
Perspectives:An International Conference,April 30-May 2, 1992, ed. B. Toscani
Politica
(NewYork:Peter Lang, 1993), reprintedin Fubini,Italiaquattrocentesca:
e diplomazia nell'ett di Lorenzoil Magnifico (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1994), 87-106.
I thank ProfessorsJohnNajemyandJudith Brownfor bringing Fubini'sessays
to my attention and Dr.BetsyRosascofor discussingthe conspiracywith me.
73. Riccardo Fubini, Quattrocentofiorentino: Politica diplomazia cultura (Pisa:
Pacini, 1996), 141-57, discusses the relationship of the legitimacy issues
provoked by the assassination of the duke of Orleans to these events in
15th-centuryFlorence. According to him (149), the notes of Donato Acciaiuoli, largely based on the lectures at the Universityof Florence given by the
Greek scholar John Argyropoulos, reveal that interpretations of equitable
authority,and consequently legitimate rule, were debated as the new edition
of Aristotle was prepared. Aristotle'sNichomachean
Ethicscontinued to be of
direct concern in Florence;see n. 87 below.
74. Policraticus 5.2 (The Statesman's Book, 65): "The place of the head in the
body of the commonwealth is filled by the prince who is subject only to God
and to those who exercise his office and represent Him on earth, even as in the
human body the head is quickened and governed by the soul...." John
continued the biological metaphor by describing priests as the soul of the
body politic, judges and provincial administrators as the eyes, ears, and
tongue, knights as the body's hands, clerks of the treasury as its bowels, and
the peasants and tradesmen of the state as its feet.
DONATELLO'S
75. For John's claims that he followed a political manual, the "Institutio
Traiani,"which he said was written by Plutarchfor Emperor Trajan,see, for
Book,64). Historiansgenerally think that
example, ibid., 5.2 (The Statesman's
John himself originated these theories and invented the existence of this
manual. See, for example, Hans Liebeschitz, MedievalHumanismin theLifeand
Writingsof John of Salisbury,Warburg Institute Studies, vol. 17 (London:
WarburgInstitute,Universityof London, 1950), 24-25. On the wide independent circulation of this excerpt of the Policraticus,see above at n. 57. On its
presence in the Libraryof S. Marco,see n. 50 above.
76. Policraticus
3.15; TheStatesman's
Book,lxxiii: "To kill a tyrantis not merely
lawful,but right andjust. For whosoevertakesup the sworddeserves to perish
by the sword.And he is understood to take up the swordwho usurps it by his
own temerity and who does not receive the power of using it from God.
Therefore the lawrightlytakesarms againsthim who disarmsthe laws ..."
77. For the account ofJudith, see ibid., 8.20 (TheStatesman's
Book,370-72).
It is quoted in part below at n. 80.John made clear that not only kings but also
their agents and other privateindividualscould be considered tyrants(ibid.,
8.17; TheStatesman's
Book,336): "It is not only kings who practice tyranny,but
among private men there are a host of tyrants,since the power which they
have, they turn to some forbidden object."
Both Jean Petit and Jean Gerson picked up the Policraticus's
emphasis on
Judith as an exemplar of tyrannicideand cited her in the debates at Parisand
Constance. See Coville,213, 436.
78. Policraticus8.18, 8.20 (The Statesman'sBook, 350-51, 373). Professor
Roger Crum suggested to me that the expression on the face of the bronze
Davidmay relate to this characterizationof David'srole byJohn of Salisbury.
79. Ibid., 8.18 (TheStatesman's
Book,356). Coville, 436, notes that Gerson in
the debates at Paris and Constance exempted Judith from any sin for having
flattered Holofernes.
80. Ibid., 8.20 (TheStatesman's
Book,370-72).John is quoting from the Book
ofJudith 9.12-15 and 10.2-4. He emphasizes his point that tyrannicidesmust
work as God's agents by includingJudith's prayerfor sufficientcourage to do
the deed and a detailed description ofJudith's beautyenhanced by God, both
taken from the Book ofJudith.
81.John's endorsement of deceit and cunning was repeated by Italian
political figures such as Cola di Rienzo, whose letter to the archbishop of
Prague articulates this aspect of Judith (Epistolariodi Cola di Rienzo,ed.
Annibale Gabrielli [Rome: Forzani, 1890], 84, cited in Capozzi [as in n. 23],
22).
In later Renaissancethought and artisticrepresentation,the undertones of
Judith's sexualityand manipulativebehaviorbecame increasinglyobvious and
erotic, alluded to by partialor full nudity.By this time the subject of the wiles
of women had become popular, and Judith was sometimes associated negativelywith women like Delilah, Eve, and Aristotle'swife, Phyllis,who wielded
their sexualityagainstmen, betrayingthem and leading them to ruin. See, for
example, Jan Biaostocki, "La gamba sinistra della Giuditta: II quadro di
Giorgione nella storia della tema," in Giorgionee l'umanesimoveneziano,ed.
Rodolfo Pallucchini,2 vols. (Florence:L. S. Olschki, 1981), vol. 1, 193-227; H.
Diane Russell, ed., with Bernadine Barnes, Eva/Ave:Womenin Renaissanceand
BaroquePrints(Washington,D.C.: National Galleryof Art;New York:Feminist
Press at the City University of New York, 1990); and Raimond Van Marle,
de l'artprofaneau Moyen-Age
et a la Renaissanceet la decoration
des
L'iconographie
demeures,
2 vols. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1931-32), vol. 2, 479-81. There is a very
rare alternate use of nudity to characterizeJudith as an emblem of all'antica
heroism;see the bronze statuetteofJudith by an anonymous late 15th-century
artistfrom Padua,formerlyin the KaiserFriedrichMuseum,Berlin, discussed
by Smith (as in n. 50), 59-80.
By the early 16th century reaction in Florence to Donatello's statue was
mixed, perhaps reflecting some of these changes. When the question of where
to place Michelangelo's Davidwas debated in 1503, one committee member
was considered an evil omen because it
suggested that the JudithandHolofernes
depicted a woman killing a man. Nevertheless,when the decision was made to
set up the David on the ringhierain its place, the Judith and Holoferneswas
reinstalled in the equally important ceremonial space of the republican
government, the Loggia dei Lanzi. Perhapsits repositioning under the reliefs
of the Virtues on the loggia facade was intended to emphasize the traditional
associationsof the theme as a triumphof virtueovervice, as suggested to me by
ProfessorJohn Paoletti. In contrast, Yael Even, "The Loggia dei Lanzi: A
Showcaseof Female Subjugation,"in TheExpandingDiscourse:
FeminismandArt
History,ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York:Icon Editions,
1992), 126-37, sees the sculpture's transfer to the loggia as a deliberate
demotion.
82. John counseled againstmurderby poison, insistingthe tyrannicidemust
be accomplished "without loss of religion and honor" (Policraticus8.20; The
Statesman's
Book,373). For the fuller context of his statement about murder by
the sword, see n. 76 above. One of the arguments advanced at Paris and at
Constance inJean Petit's defense of the legitimacyof the duke of Burgundy's
tyrannicideof Louis of Orleanswasits appropriatechoice of weapon, a sword.
Petit contrasted this to the earlier murder of the son of the duke of Burgundy
by poisoned apple. See Coville, 104.
83. The topicality of the Policraticusmay have inspired the changed
iconographyof Davidfirstseen in the marbleDavidby Donatello, carved at the
beginning of the 15th century when the controversyabout the murder in
France erupted. According to Janson, 6, there had been only one earlier
representation of David standing triumphant over the decapitated Goliath,
DAVID AND JUDITH: METAPHORS
OF MEDICI RULE
47
that painted by Taddeo Gaddiin the BaroncelliChapel, S. Croce, in the 1330s.
It was part of a cycle of the lives of the Virgin and Christ, in which David
figured as an ancestor, prophet, and type of Christ. RobertJ. H. Janson-La
Palme, "Taddeo Gaddi'sBaroncelli Chapel: Studies in Design and Content,"
Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1976, 340-45, argued that the unprecedented interpretation resulted from a specific familial association. He
contended that the emphasis on David'sheroic victorywasintended to allude
to the militaryaccomplishmentsof Bartolo Manetti Baroncelli, an illustrious
member of the patron'sfamily.
84. See Nicolai Rubinstein, TheGovernment
undertheMedici(1434 to
ofFlorence
1494) (Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1966), 88-135.
85. For the literaryand graphic evidence concerning the appearanceof the
lost seated Marsyasstatue, see Caglioti, 1994 (as in n. 12), 81-88.
86. Ibid., esp. 74-86.
87. Cagliotianalyzedthe relationship to Nesi's treatiseL'eticanicomachea,
pt.
in ibid., 87-90. For copies of the treatise,see Indice
1, Demoribusdialogiquattuor,
d'Italia(Rome: Istituto Poligraficodello
generaledegliincunabolidellebiblioteche
Stato, 1972), vol. 5, 78, no. 8945. The copy owned by the Medici is in the
Biblioteca LaurenzianaPlut. LXXVII.24. As Cagliotinoted, Rosella Bonfanti,
"Su un dialogo filosofico del tardo '400: Il 'De Moribus' del fiorentino
GiovanniNesi (1456-1522?)," Rinascimento,
ser.2, 11 (1971): 203-21, esp. 211,
stressedthe antityrannicalemphasisof Nesi's commentary.The importance of
Aristotle'streatisein Florentinepolitical thought of the 15th century,precisely
in regard to issues of legitimate rule and equitable government, was emphasized by Fubini. See n. 73 above.
88. Wester and Simon (as in n. 11) attribute them to Donatello and date
them ca. 1460;both argumentsare followed by Ames-Lewis(as in n. 15), 147.
89. MarthaA. A. Fader,"Sculpturein the Piazzadella Signoriaas Emblem of
the Florentine Republic,"Ph.D. diss., Universityof Michigan, 1977, 193 n. 89.
90. Ames-Lewis,1989, 248-49.
91. Ames-Lewis (as in n. 15), 144-45, 153, amplified the Neoplatonic
interpretation of the theme most recently expounded by Laurie Schneider,
"Donatello'sBronze David,"ArtBulletin55 (1973): 215.
92. Leach (as in n. 14), 124-34.
93. Boccaccio, Genealogia
deorum5.25, cited in ibid., 133-34.
94. Wendy Stedman Sheard, "Antonio Lombardo's Reliefs for Alfonso
d'Este's Studio di Marmi:Their Significance and Impact on Titian," in Titian
500, ed. Joseph Manca, special issue of Studiesin theHistoryof Art 45 (1993):
327-28, 330-34, analyzedhow Ercole d'Este wasinspired by the decoration of
the courtyardof the MediciPalaceto link his own self-imageas legitimate ruler
of a peaceful and prosperousstate to Bacchus.
95. FrancescoPatrizi,"Ad CosimumMedicem virum excellentissimum,"in
his Poemata(dedicated to Pius II), Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale II x 31, fol.
8v: "Ille pudicitiae libertatis quatit verendus. / Romanae, Brutus vindex
ultorque tyranni."Patriziand other partisansof Cosimo took the opportunity
to praise Cosimo as the defender of a liberty akin to that of the Roman
Republic against the Albizzi clan. Patriziwas also the author of De institutione
reipublicae,a treatise on government of about 1460, which addressed the
dangers of a state falling into tyranny if the people rejected outstanding
leaders. On Patrizi,see James Hankins, "Cosimo de' Medici as a Patron of
HumanisticLiterature,"in Ames-Lewis,1992, 69-94, esp. 86, where the verse
is cited; and Domenico Bassi, "L'epitome di Quintiliano di Francesco Patrizi
senese," Rivista di filologia e d'istruzioneclassica22 (1893): 385-470. More
generally,on these humanist encomia to Cosimo, see Alison M. Brown, "The
Humanist Portraitof Cosimo de' Medici, Pater Patriae,"Journalof theWarburg
and CourtauldInstitutes24 (1961): 186-221.
96. On the enduring attachment to the concept of political freedom in
Florence, even after its meaning had become symbolic under Medici rule in
the 15th century, see Nicolai Rubinstein, "FlorentinaLibertas,"Rinascimento
26 (1986): 3-27. After the expulsion of the Medici in November 1495, the
Signoria decreed that the inscription on Cosimo's tomb reading "Pater
Patriae"be destroyed and replaced by "Potius Tyrannus";see idem (as in n.
9), 19-20. The original inscription was restored in 1512 and obliterated again
in 1528.
97. The literatureabout the Medici family'sstrategyin the 15th century of
manipulating traditionalforms of Florentine art and architecture and Christian imagery to its private purpose is too extensive to cite in full. See the
pioneering essayby ErnstH. Gombrich, "The EarlyMedici as Patronsof Art,"
vol. 1 (London:
reprinted in NormandForm:Studiesin theArt of theRenaissance,
Praeger, 1964), 35-57. More recent studies by Francis Ames-Lewis,Roger
Crum, and Isabelle Hyman are cited above. Among the many other publications that could be cited, see Rab Hatfield, "The Compagnia de' Magi,"
and CourtauldInstitutes33 (1970): 108-61; Irving Lavin,
Journalof theWarburg
"Donatello'sBronze Pulpits in San Lorenzo and the EarlyChristianRevival,"
in Past-Present:
Essayson Historicismin ArtfromDonatelloto Picasso(Berkeley:
Universityof California Press, 1993), 1-28; and the essays in the following
collections: Andreas Beyer and Bruce Boucher, eds., Cosimo"il Vecchio,
"Piero
de'Medici"ilGottoso,"1416-1469: KunstimDienstederMediceer/
Artin theService
of theMedici(Berlin:Akademie, 1993); and FrancisAmes-Lewis,ed., TheEarly
Mediciand TheirArtists (London: Birkbeck College, University of London,
1995). Ames-Lewis has devoted a number of essays and articles to the
patronage of Piero de' Medici.John Paoletti,who has published manyarticles
on the family's patronage, and Susan McKillop are both preparing booklength examinations of the goals and political meanings underlying the
family'spatronage.