thigh tighten, as though the whole spirit of the man were braced for a supreme endeavour.  In his right hand, kept at a just middle point between the hip and knee, he holds the piece of wood on which his sling is hung.  The sling runs round his back, and the centre of it, where the stone bulges, is held with the left hand, poised upon the left shoulder, ready to be loosed.  We feel that the next movement will involve the right hand straining to its full extent the sling, dragging the stone away, and whirling it into the air; when, after it has sped to strike Goliath in the forehead, the whole lithe body of the lad will have described a curve, and recovered its perpendicular position on the two firm legs.  Michelangelo invariably chose some decisive moment; in the action he had to represent; and though he was working here under difficulties, owing to the limitations of the damaged block at his disposal, he contrived to suggest the imminence of swift and sudden energy which shall disturb the equilibrium of his young giant’s pose.  Critics of this statue, deceived by its superficial resemblance to some Greek athletes at rest, have neglected the candid realism of the momentary act foreshadowed.  They do not understand the meaning of the sling.  Even Heath Wilson, for instance, writes:  “The massive shoulders are thrown back, the right arm is pendent, and the right hand grasps resolutely the stone with which the adversary is to be slain.”  This entirely falsifies the sculptor’s motive, misses the meaning of the sling, renders the broad strap behind the back superfluous, and changes into mere plastic symbolism what Michelangelo intended to be a moment caught from palpitating life.

It has often been remarked that David’s head is modelled upon the type of Donatello’s S. George at Orsanmichele.  The observation is just; and it suggests a comment on the habit Michelangelo early formed of treating the face idealistically, however much he took from study of his models.  Vasari, for example, says that he avoided portraiture, and composed his faces by combining several individuals.  We shall see a new ideal type of the male head emerge in a group of statues, among which the most distinguished is Giuliano de’ Medici at San Lorenzo.  We have already seen a female type created in the Madonnas of S. Peter’s and Notre Dame at Bruges.  But this is not the place to discuss Michelangelo’s theory of form in general.  That must be reserved until we enter the Sistine Chapel, in order to survey the central and the crowning product of his genius in its prime.

We have every reason to believe that Michelangelo carved his David with no guidance but drawings and a small wax model about eighteen inches in height.  The inconvenience of this method, which left the sculptor to wreak his fury on the marble with mallet and chisel, can be readily conceived.  In a famous passage, disinterred by M. Mariette from a French scholar of the sixteenth century, we have this account of the