David

David

When I saw Michelangelo’s world-famous David for the first time as a teenager, I immediately noticed the poor proportions. For me it was incomprehensible why this work of art was so highly praised from all over the world.
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However, Michelangelo did not make any mistakes, but rather designed the proportions very carefully. But I didn’t find that out until years later.
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His sculpture was originally intended to be placed at a much higher location and decorate the outer facade of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiori and not where it stands today – at a much lower location.
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In 1501, the 26-year-old Michelangelo received an order from the Arte della Lana, the wool weavers’ guild and administrator of the cathedral, to create a statue of David made of a 5m long, relatively narrow block of Carrara marble.
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Two sculptors had already tried their hand at the block but had given up, leaving the cracked, roughly hewn block in the cathedral garden.
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A commission appointed by the Signoria, which included the artists Piero di Cosimo, Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, among others, decided in 1501 to place the David in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the Signoria.
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This can be admired there today. The angle from which the viewer has since viewed the statue is therefore much lower than the originally planned location on the outer facade of the cathedral, according to which Michelangelo originally aligned the proportions.
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The angle from which the viewer has since viewed the statue is therefore much lower than the originally planned location on the outer facade of the cathedral, according to which Michelangelo originally aligned the proportions.
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I would have always liked to see a 3D animation of how the proportions shorten when you look at the statue from below at the originally planned higher location. Perhaps this is a suggestion to the Accademia di Belle Artie in Florence, where the original is today. A copy can now be seen in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.
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This photo was taken as I walked past in the evening. It was already dark and I had motion blur in my photo. At first I wanted to throw it in the trash, but the longer I looked at this photo, the more attractive it seemed to me.
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Ars longa vita brevis.
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Photo: Peter J. Spoerer © – All rights reserved
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