The David di Donatello Awards, named after Donatello's David, a symbolic statue of the Italian Renaissance, are film awards given out each year by the Accademia del Cinema Italiano. There are 26 award categories, as of 2023.
A David di Donatello awarded in 2014
Italian President Ciampi shows the prize at the 2005 awards ceremony.
David is the title of two statues of the biblical hero by the Italian Early Renaissance sculptor Donatello. They consist of an early work in marble of a clothed figure (1408–09), and a far more famous bronze figure that is nude except for helmet and boots, and dates to the 1440s or later. Both are now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence. The first was Donatello's most important commission up to that point, and had a religious context, placed on Florence Cathedral. The bronze remains his most famous work, and was made for a secular context, commissioned by the Medici family.
Donatello, David, bronze, 1435–40, Florence, Bargello, detail
David (Donatello)
Donatello, the bronze David (1440s?), Bargello Florence, h.158 cm
The Marble David (1408–1409 and 1416), Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Height 191.5 cm.