Read the following excerpt from The Loner. After each paragraph, type two facts you learn about sheep or shepherding. Use exact words from the excerpt. Boss exploded. "So that's your idea of being a shepherd, is it? Well, I'll tell you my idea and I want you to listen hard. I thought you might make a good herder, once you got a lot of nonsense out of your head. There isn't room for nonsense when you're taking care of sheep. Shepherding is one of the hardest jobs in the world. In other kinds of work, a man stays on a job for so many hours and then he's through. In shepherding, you work every minute of every day and night, and when you sleep you sleep with one ear on the bed-ground." Her voice came in gasps, beyond her control.

Facts about sheep: Taking care of the sheep does not require non sense and you need to be serious.

Facts about sheparding: sheparding is one of the hardest jobs in the world.

You work every minute of every day and night.

perhaps donatello’s landmark work – and one of the greatest sculptural works of the early renaissance – was his bronze statue of david.  this work signals the return of the sculpture in the round figure, and because it was the first such work like this in over a thousand years, it is one of the most important works in the history of western art.

david is shown at a triumphal moment within the biblical storyline of his battle with the philistine, goliath.  according to the account, after david struck goliath with the stone from his slingshot, he cut off his head with goliath’s sword.  here, we see the aftermath of this event as david stands in a contemplative pose with one foot atop his enemy’s severed head.  david wears nothing but boots and a shepherd’s hat with laurel leaves on top of it, which may allude to his victory or to his role as a poet and musician.

before donatello’s work, david was typically depicted as a king, given his status in the old testament.  here, however, we have a stark change in the way david is depicted.  not only is he shown in the, but he’s also a youth.  in middle ages, nudity was not used in art except in certain moral contexts, such as the depiction of adam and eve, or the sending of souls off to the underworld.  in the classical world, was often used in a different, majestic context, such as with figures who were gods, heroes, or athletes.  here, donatello seems to be calling to mind the type of heroic nudity of antiquity, since david is depicted at triumphal point in the biblical narrative of his victory over goliath.

as for david’s youthfulness, donatello has gone back to the early life of the biblical david to depict him, rather than to his later life as a king.  it seems that donatello is trying to associate david’s youth with an innocent and virtuous life.  david looks young here – so young, in fact, that his muscles have barely developed enough to hold the large sword – that his victory over his foe is all the more improbable.  could david’s victory have been gained without divine intervention?   donatello’s work seems to imply that the answer is “no” – the victory was god’s rather than man’s.

in any case, donatello’s david is a classic work of renaissance sculpture, given its judaeo-christian subject matter modeled on a classical sculptural type.  it was revolutionary for its day – so much so that it did not get copied right away.  the idea of the life-sized sculpture-in-the-round evidently took some time to sink in and become an acceptable statue type