More famous is his statue of David in front of Michelangelo. Donatello lived in the Renaissance era, also called the era of the individual (Sayre 463). A poet and scholar of the time named Petrarch conceived this new concept called “Humanism”, as defined in Henry Sayre's book “A World of Art” as “the philosophy which emphasizes the unique value of each person” (Sayre , 463). Donatello captured this belief in his statue of David, something that would be made famous by the artist-sculptor Michelangelo, only instead of a depiction of a man's ideal physique, Donatello opts for a young man. “It is placed in a perfectly classical contrapposto” (Sayre 463), a sculptural scheme in which a standing human figure is balanced so that the weight rests on one leg, freeing the other leg which is bent at the knee (Sayre , 547 ), “But the young hero - almost anti-heroic in the youthful fragility of his physique - is almost fully aware of himself, his attention is directed, in what seems to be a true self-adoration, on himself as an object of physical beauty. " (Sayre 463). In Padua, one of Donatello's most controversial pieces was the Gattamelata, a statue, commissioned by the city, which was supposed to honor Erasmo da Narni, a Venetian nobleman and mercenary. The controversy in the piece came because it was a departure from the traditional