According to Baedeker the Bacchus and the David revolve.  Certainly they are on revolving stands, but to say that they revolve is to disregard utterly the character of the Italian official.  A catch holds each in its place, and any effort to release this or to induce the custodian to release it is equally futile.  “Chiuso” (closed), he replies, and that is final.  Useless to explain that the backs of statues can be beautiful as the front; that one of the triumphs of great statuary is its equal perfection from every point; that the revolving stand was not made for a joke but for a serious purpose.  “Chiuso,” he replies.  The museum custodians of Italy are either like this—­jaded figures of apathy—­or they are enthusiasts.  To each enthusiast there are ninety-nine of the other, who either sit in a kind of stupor and watch you with sullen suspicion, or clear their throats as no gentleman should.  The result is that when one meets the enthusiasts one remembers them.  There is a little dark fellow in the Brera at Milan whose zeal in displaying the merits of Mantegna’s foreshortened Christ is as unforgettable as a striking piece of character-acting in a theatre.  There is a more reserved but hardly less appreciative official in the Accademia at Bologna with a genuine if incommunicable passion for Guido Reni.  And, lastly, there is Alfred Branconi, at S. Croce, with his continual and rapturous “It is faine!  It is faine!” but he is a private guide.  The Bargello custodians belong to the other camp.

The fondness of sculptors for David as a subject is due to the fact that the Florentines, who had spent so much of their time under tyrants and so much of their blood in resisting them, were captivated by the idea of this stripling freeing his compatriots from Goliath and the Philistines.  David, as I have said in my remarks on the Piazza della Signoria, stood to them, with Judith, as a champion of liberty.  He was alluring also on account of his youth, so attractive to Renaissance sculptors and poets, and the Florentines’ admiration was not diminished by the circumstance that his task was a singularly light one, since he never came to close quarters with his antagonist at all and had the Lord of Hosts on his side.  A David of mythology, Perseus, another Florentine hero, a stripling with what looked like a formidable enemy, also enjoyed supernatural assistance.

David appealed to the greatest sculptors of all—­to Michelangelo, to Donatello, and to Verrocchio; and Michelangelo made two figures, one of which is here and the other at the Accademia, and Donatello two figures, both of which are here, so that, Verrocchio’s example being also here, very interesting comparisons are possible.