Within the course of two hundred years, there was four completely different statues of David created in Italy; all which are masterpieces. Donatello's came first, then Verrocchio's, followed by Michelangelo's, and finally that of Bernini. The four sculptors had completely different objectives to their own statues.

Donatello was the son of Niccolò di Betto Bardi, a Florentine wool carder. It is not known how he began his career, but it seems likely that he learned stone carving from one of the sculptors working for the cathedral of Florence about 1400. Some time between 1404 and 1407 he became a member of the workshop of Lorenzo Ghiberti, a sculptor in bronze who in 1402 had won the competition for the doors of the Florentine baptistery. Donatello's earliest work of which there is certain knowledge, a marble statue of David, shows an artistic debt to Ghiberti, who was then the leading Florentine exponen

Some topics in this essay:
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