Great Art Explained

Michelangelo's David

Michelangelo was the first superstar artist. He was a sculptor, a painter, an architect, a poet and an engineer. An outsider touched by genius. His statue of David, the most famous statue in the world, personifies the aesthetics of High Renaissance art, the politics of Renaissance Florence, and the technical virtuosity of Greek sculpture. James Payne looks at the story of Michelangelo’s David, and discovers it is anything but the story of a teenage boy king who slew Goliath.