Italian painter and theorist. He went to Milan about 1665 to study painting under Francesco Cairo. A decade later he moved to Venice, where for the Lombard chapel of Santa Maria dei Frari he painted St Carlo Borromeo Distributing Alms to the Poor (in situ) in the dark, dramatic, fully Baroque manner of his teacher. David's other documented works in Venice are in Santa Maria del Carmelo and the Palazzo Albizzi a Sant'Aponal. While in Venice he also operated a highly successful art academy, remarkably, in competition with Pietro della Vecchia, a far more successful painter. Contemporary reports indicate that 'he contradicted della Vecchia at every turn', and that he played down the importance of drawing, making it secondary to the painter's own ideas. This attitude was highly radical, given that drawing was then considered the basis of an artist's education. By May 1686 David was in Rome, where he remained for the rest of his life. His two large canvases for Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, the Adoration of the Magi and the Adoration of the Shepherds, are generally considered his best works. Both were commissioned some time after 1691 by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, the nephew of Pope Alexander VIII. They are painted with rich colours and turbulent rhythms, in the manner of the much-acclaimed Death of St Francis Xavier by Giovanni Battista Gaulli (known as Baciccio) in the same church. David is now recognized as the first true scholar of Leonardo da Vinci. Though his essay on Leonardo is untraced, his research method (as known from his letters) was based on lengthy and painstaking examination and decipherment of the artist's original manuscripts, such as the Codex Leicester (Holkham Hall, Norfolk), which in the late 17th century was in Rome in the possession of the painter Giuseppe Ghezzi. David is even better known for his treatise entitled L'amore dell'arte, written about 1704 and circulated in manuscript form among his friends, though never published. The treatise, dedicated to Clement XI, is in the form of a virulent attack, somewhat in the tradition of Salvator Rosa, on the art establishment of Rome as represented by the Accademia di San Luca. Despite its querulous tone, David's treatise is important in anticipating, by more than half a century, the Romantic position of the artist, who is freed from the strictures of the establishment and thus able to follow the dictates of his own genius. //