Yes, Michelangelo’s David, seems to be falling down because his ankles cannot bear the weight.
People joke and sneer and talk about his private parts, which are not private. Read The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone. Yes, there is a movie but read the book.
Michelangelo Buonarotti lived near Settignano, marble capital of the world, and no one could sell that huge block of marble. It is said that painting is adding, and sculpture is taking away.
That he saw David in that huge block and chipped away at it until he reached David is remarkable. Why people on Slate want to wipe this incredible human effort off the books and make jokes about it is beyond me.
I’ve only seen him once and have often seen a duplicate outside the Palazzo Vecchio facing Piazza Signoria and easily seen while sipping espresso outside at Rivoire, a people-watching mecca. Mostly tourists these days. Do they really know who Fr Girolamo Savonarola was? Have they seen his cell at San Marco, where Fra Angelico painted his best works. Walk up the stairs and tell me Fra Angelico’s Annunciation nearly stopped your heart as I would not be surprised.
I was there on 9.11 and we all held hands on the Piazza while one bell rang to mourn the dead. I couldn’t fly home, they wouldn’t let me go further then Newfoundland and I had only summer clothes. Fake David and Poseidon (the Great White One) looked upon us and we moved on in life only to be persecuted by our own government for the past 12 years under pseudo-patriotic terms.
The Sistine Chapel was closed for years but I got to see it, and the Pieta, before one was restored and before and after the Pieta was damaged. Placing David on a space vehicle is not viable to me for many reasons.
Our art and heritage is something humans should treasure. I broke my ankle 25 years ago and it is having issues these days. I wouldn’t go to space or lie down for the rest of my life for that, when an ice pack can suffice.
Save David. Michelangelo went to Santo Spirito and was allowed to illegally perform autopsies as that was the only way he could fully study the structure of the human body that he exemplified in his David and Pietas (one is in the Duomo Museum that is unfinished and raw and powerful.
We have some common themes that keep up together, let’s hope we keep it that way. Dee
Cooking with Dee 