The River Arno at night, looking towards the Ponte Vecchio.
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Santa Croce at night. This is close to the Brat's apartment and his university. At night all the youngsters congregate here.
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The next day we went to visit David...and he his rather gorgeous!!
David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created in marble between 1501 and 1504 by Michelangelo. David stands 5.17m high and weighs over 6 tons!
Michelangelo was asked by the consuls of the Board to complete an unfinished project begun in 1464 by Agostino di Duccio and later carried on by Antonio Rossellino in 1475. Both sculptors had in the end rejected the enormous block of marble due to the presence of too many imperfections, which may have threatened the stability of such a huge statue. This block of marble of exceptional dimensions remained therefore neglected for 25 years before Michelangelo started to work on it.
David was originally meant to be one of a series of large statues to be positioned in the niches of the cathedral’s tribunes, about 80m above the ground, but upon completion the Board realised it was too heavy and so it was placed outside the Palazzo Vecchio, in the Piazza della Signoria where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. The statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, in 1873, and later replaced at the original location by a replica.
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The proportions of the David are atypical of Michelangelo's work; the figure has an unusually large head and hands (particularly apparent in the right hand). These enlargements may be due to the fact that the statue was originally intended to be placed on the cathedral roofline, where the important parts of the sculpture may have been accentuated in order to be visible from below. The small size of the genitals, though, is in line with his other works and with Renaissance conventions in general, perhaps referencing the ancient Greek ideal of pre-pubescent male nudity.
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It is a simply stunning piece of art, and we spent ages there, viewing David from all angles.
