Editing David (Michelangelo) (section)

===Process===
Michelangelo regarded a single block of stone as containing all the possible conceptions for a work of art, and believed that the artist's task is sculpting the marble block to reveal the ideal form within, an expression of his [[Neoplatonism|Neo-Platonic]] belief that body and mind are separate, and must work in concert and strive to attain union with one another and with the divine.<ref name="Angier2001">{{cite web |last1=Angier |first1=Jeremy |title=The Process of Artistic Creation in Terms of the Non-finito |date=7 May 2001 |url=http://www.machinegraphics.com/writings/non-finito/non-finito.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071008092120/http://www.machinegraphics.com/writings/non-finito/non-finito.html |archive-date=8 October 2007}}</ref><ref name="RusbultFinkelKumashiro2009">{{cite journal |last1=Rusbult |first1=Caryl |last2=Finkel |first2=Eli J. |last3=Kumashiro |first3=Madoka |title=The Michelangelo phenomenon |journal=Current Directions in Psychological Science |date=1 December 2009 |volume=18 |issue=6 |page=307 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01657.x |s2cid=14417940 |url=https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/5363/1/Michelangelo%20Phenomenon%20Rusbult%20et%20al%202009%20Current%20Directions.pdf}}</ref> In later years, speaking of his early commissions sculpting marble, he contended that he was merely liberating figures that were already existent in the stone, and that he could see them in his mind's eye.<ref name="Coates2016">{{cite book |last1=Coates |first1=Victoria C. Gardner |title=David's Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art |year=2016 |publisher=Encounter Books |isbn=978-1-59403-722-1 |page=96 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kwEaAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA96}}</ref>

[[Giorgio Vasari]] wrote of Michelangelo sculpting the ''Prisoners'' that his method was to chisel the parts in highest relief first, then gradually revealing the lower parts. According to Franca Falletti, the passage describes Michelangelo's process of working marble in general. Lengthy preparatory work was done before the actual sculpting began – this included sketches, drawings and the making of small-scale terracotta  or wax models. After these preliminary studies he went directly to sculpting the marble, using the method described by Vasari. He chiseled layer after layer from the main face of the stone, and then gradually more and more of the other sides. The unfinished state of the ''Prisoners'' demonstrates this process, and ''David'' must have been sculpted in the same manner.<ref name="Falletti2004"/>

The massive block of white marble that was to become the ''David'', measuring nine ''[[Italian units of measurement#Length|braccia]]'' in length, was of ''bianco ordinario'' grade stone, rather than the superior ''[[Carrara marble#Quarries|statuario]]''. It came from the old Roman Fantiscritti quarry at the centre of the Carrara marble basins,<ref name="Barron2018" /> and had been transported by oxen-pulled carts to the [[Tyrrhenian Sea|sea]], whence it was carried on barges dragged by oxen up the river [[Arno]] to Florence.<ref name="Falletti2004"/><ref name="Scigliano2005">{{cite book |last1=Scigliano |first1=Eric |title=Michelangelo's Mountain: The Quest For Perfection in the Marble Quarries of Carrara |year=2005 |publisher=New York : Free Press |isbn=978-0-7432-5477-9 |page=94 |url=https://archive.org/details/michelangelosmou0000scig/page/94/mode/2up}}</ref>

The Operai del Duomo had raised the block to an upright position prior to the first inspection of their purchase, but a scaffolding had to be built so that Michelangelo could reach every part. The artist, who made his steel chisels himself,<ref name="Barron2018" /> began cutting the stone with the ''subbia'', a heavy, pointed iron tool used to rough out the main mass, before he employed the two-toothed shorter blade called the ''calcagnuolo''.<ref name="Unger2015" /> By the time he began to use the three-toothed ''gradina'',<ref name="Scigliano200747">{{cite book |last1=Scigliano |first1=Eric |title=Michelangelo's Mountain: The Quest For Perfection in the Marble Quarries of Carrara |year=2007 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4165-9135-1 |pages=48–49 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QKDeyBjXzB8C&pg=PA48}}</ref> a serrated claw chisel whose marks are seen in his unfinished sculptures,<ref name="Carradori2002">{{cite book |last1=Carradori |first1=Francesco |title=Elementary Instructions for Students of Sculpture |year=2002 |publisher=Getty Publications |isbn=978-0-89236-688-0 |page=98 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CRZquQOMPWgC&pg=PA98}}</ref> the basic form of the statue was emerging from the matrix. When he sculpted ''David'''s hair and the pupils of his eyes, he used the ''trapano'', a drill worked with a bow,<ref name="Vasari1907">{{cite book |last1=Vasari |first1=Giorgio |translator-last=Maclehose  |translator-first=Louisa S. |title=Vasari on Technique: Being the Introduction to the Three Arts of Design, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, Prefixed to the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects |year=1907 |publisher=J.M. Dent |isbn=978-0-486-20717-9 |page=48 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_X0EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA48}}</ref>{{sfn|Goffen|2002|p=131}} like the ancient sculptors.<ref name="Gill2013">{{cite book |last1=Gill |first1=Anton |title=Il Gigante: Michelangelo, Florence, and the David 1492–1504 |year=2013 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=978-1-4668-5504-5 |page=219 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7YfWAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT219}}</ref>

Michelangelo did without flat chisels in his sculpturing, and brought his pieces to the state of ''[[non finito]]'' almost entirely with toothed chisels. During the 2003 restoration of ''David'', Italian researchers observed marks of the ''subbia'', the sharpened ''subbia da taglio'', the slightly flattened ''unghietto'' (fingernail), and the ''gradina'', as well as marks from a smaller-toothed chisel, the ''dente di cane'' (dog's tooth). They found no evidence of Michelangelo using flat chisels in the work.<ref name="Scigliano200747" />

A node of marble on the ''gigante'' that Michelangelo chiseled away before he began work on ''David'' in earnest has been interpreted by historians as a knot of drapery, based on the surmise that Agostino di Duccio's figure was intended to be clothed. [[Irving Lavin]] proposes that the node may have been a point, that is, a knob of marble left purposely by Agostino as a fixed reference for a mechanical transfer measuring off his statue from the model.<ref name="Wittkower1977">{{cite book |last1=Wittkower |first1=Rudolf |title=Sculpture: Processes and Principles |date=1977 |publisher=Allen Lane |isbn=978-0-7139-0878-7 |page=86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JCg3AQAAIAAJ&q=%22nodus%22%20%22David%22%20%22Michelangelo%22}}</ref> Lavin suggests that Agostino's aborted attempt was the result of an error in his pointing system, and that if his conjecture is correct, it may illuminate a note added in the margin next to the passage in the commission giving ''il gigante'' to Michelangelo:<ref name="Lavin1967">{{cite journal |last1=Lavin |first1=Irving |title=Bozzetti and Modelli {{!}} Notes on Sculptural Procedure from the Early Renaissance through Bernini |journal=Stil und Überlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes |date=1967 |volume=III |pages=93–94, 97–98 |url=https://publications.ias.edu/sites/default/files/Lavin_BozzettiModelli_1967.pdf |publisher=Akten des 21. internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte in Bonn 1964}}</ref> {{blockquote|The said Michelangelo began to work on the said giant on the morning of 13 September 1501, although a few days earlier, on 9 September, he had with one or two blows of the chisel (''uno vel duo ictibus'') removed a certain nodus (''quoddam nodum'') that it had on its chest.<ref name="Lavin1967" />}}