Friday, August 17, 2012

The most famous statue in the world


Michelangelo's Masterpiece The David

Chapter 12

See slide show on left side of the blog



     There it was, The David, the most famous statue/sculpture in the world. Only I was looking at it in front of the City Hall of Florence in the Palazzo Vecchio. This was a replica. A very good one at that.
     The real David was up the street a few blocks in the Galleria dell”Accademia. Be ready for the tourists, and if you don't have your ticket paid up in advance, be prepared to wait in a long, long, long line.
     Our tickets purchased on line while still at home in Bainbridge, we entered the galleria at our appointed time. The David was just ahead, dominant in its own prominent place. It was carefully guarded, and the guards watched the crowds for anyone attempting to take a picture.
     “No foto. No foto.”
      So here, we have the museum's official photo of how you will see it.
     You can try to take your own photo, but believe me, here the guards mean business.
     The David is one of those objects of art you want to study, look at it for a long time and contemplate its majesty. Try to do it with hundreds of tourists surrounding its base, all chattering, kids running, guards confiscating cameras. Come back in January, closed on Monday.
     The statue copy, at right, of the original in the Palazzo Vecchio along with an entire courtyard of copies, the originals inside away from the weather. To David's left here is the Uffizi Museum, one of the oldest if not the oldest museums in the world, where here the Renaissance began.
     If you go to see the real David in the Accademia, he stands 17 feet tall in a special added wing of the museum where it was moved inside in 1873. In both the replica outside and the original inside, you can't help to notice the enlarged right hand, veined and tense just at the moment when he slings the rock at Goliath.
     In 2003 and 2004, The David was given a cleaning and a restoration, where today as you see it, it gleams and sparkles in its original Carrara marble.
     There are other works in the Accadamia, but The David outranks them all. You will see some works by Alessandro Allori and Bronzino, and you also will see two works by Michelangelo, his Four Prisoners and his portrayal of St. Matthew.