Accademia (Galleria dell’Accademia) – this museum houses Michelangelos David, the consummate Renaissance statue of the buff, biblical shepherd boy ready to take on the giant. This six-ton, 17-foot-tall symbol of divine victory over evil represents a new century and a whole new Renaissance outlook. This is the age of Columbus and classicism, Galileo and Gutenberg, Luther and Leonardo – of Florence and the Renaissance.
You’ll want to make triple-sure that you have your tickets purchased in advance for the Accademia. If not, you will lose a couple of hours waiting to get in. Once inside – you’ll want to allow at least an hour to do justice to the Accademia to make sure you see Michelangelo’s most famous work as well as the so-called Prisioners that give insight into the sculpting process of this complex genius.
With David presiding at the “altar,” the Prisioners lining the “nave,” and hordes of “pilgrims” crowding in to look, you’ve arrived at Florence’s “cathedral of humanism.”
When you look into the eyes of Michelangelo’s David, you’re looking into the eyes of Renaissance Man. This 14-foot tall symbol of divine victory over evil represents a new century and a whole new Renaissance outlook. This is the age of Columbus and classcism, Galileo and Gutenberg, Luther and Leonardo – of Florence and the Renaissance.
In 1501, Michelangelo Buronarroti, a 26-year-old Florentine, was commissioned to carve a large-scale work for the Duomo – Florence’s cathedral. He was given a block of marble that other sculptors had rejected as too tall, shallow, and flawed to be of any value. But Michelangelo picked up his hammer and chisel, knocked a knot off what became David’s heart, and started to work.
The figure of David comes from a Bible story. The Israelites, God’s chosen people, are surrounded by barbarian warriors led by a brutish giant named Goliath. The giant challenges the Israelites to send someone out to fight him. Everyone is afraid except for one young shepherd boy – David. Armed only with a sling, which he’s thrown over his shoulder, David cradles a stone in the pouch of the sling and faces Goliath.
In this carving, Michelangelo captures David as he’s sizing up his enemy. He stands relaxed but alert, leaning on one leg in a classical pose known as the contrapposto. In his powerful right hand, he fondles the stone, ready to fling it at the giant. His gaze is steady – searching with intense concentration, but also with extreme confidence. Michelangelo has caught the precise moment when David is saying to himself, “I can take this guy.”
Note that while some scholars think David’s pose indicates he’s already slain the giant, others believe that Michelangelo has portrayed David preparing to fight the giant. That’s why – unlike depictions of David after the kill – this one does not show the giant’s severed head.
David is a symbol of Renaissance optimism. He’s no brute. He’s a civilized, thinking individual who can grapple with an overcome problems. He needs no armor, only his God-given body and wits. Look at his right hand, with the raised veins and strong, relaxed fingers – many complained that it was too big and overdeveloped. But this represents the hand of a man powered by the strength of God. No mere boy could slay the giant. But David, powered by God, could… and did.
Look closely at David’s head, then compare it with the size of his body. The proportions are just a bit off. The statue was originally commissioned to stand on the roof of the Duomo. But during the three years it took to sculpt, they decided instead to place it guarding the entrance of the Town Hall, or Palazzo Vecchio. If David’s head seems a bit big for his body, it’s because Michelangelo had designed it to appear in the right proportion when seen from street level, far below the church rooftop.
When David was finished, the colossus was placed standing up in a cart and dragged across rollers from Michelangelo’s workshop through the streets to the Palazzo Vecchio. There David stood – naked and outdoors – for 350 years. In the right light, you can see signs of weathering on his shoulders. Also, you can see a crack in David’s left arm where it was broken off during a 1527 riot. In 1873, to conserve the masterpiece, the statue was finally replaced with a copy and moved here. David now stands under a wonderful Renaissance-style dome designed just for him.
David is interesting from every angle. Start from the front. From this view, he’s the picture of relaxed confidence. Now walk to the right. Take about 20 steps or so. Then look back so you’re looking straight into his face. Gazing into the eyes from here, he seems a bit less sure, as he furrows his brow and contemplates the terrible giant.
From behind, you really appreciate the statue’s sheer size. Running down David’s back, yo ucan see his sling slung down.
In Michelangelo’s day, Renaissance Florentines could identify with David. Like him, they considered themselves God-blessed underdogs fighting their city-state rivals. In a deeper sense, they were civilized Renaissance people slaying the ugly giant of Medieval superstition, pessimism, and oppression.
Today, David stands as the ultimate symbol of the Renaissance – of optimism, humanism, and of all that’s good in the human race.
This bronze bust, by one of Michelangelo’s pupils, shows a craggy, wrinkled Michelangelo, just before his death at age 89.
Michelangelo lived a long and productive life. Born to a poor-but-noble family, he was raised in the neighborhood near Santa Croce church. He showed artistic talent early, but his father forbid him form becoming an artist – which back then was a less-than-noble profession. At age 13, Michelangelo was plucked from obscurity by none other than the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo “the Magnificent” He nurtured the boy’s budding talent by making him a member of his high-class household.
Look closely at the statue, especially the nose. As a teenager, Michelangelo – who would always be known as temperamental and prickly – got his nose broken in a fight with a rival artist. Michelangelo went on to create great beauty, but himself was never classically handsome.
The Prisoners (from about 1516 to 1534)
These unfinished figures seem to be fighting to free themselves from the stone. Michelangelo believed the sculptor was a tool of God, not creating but simply revealing the powerful and beautiful figures God put in the marble. Michelangelo’s job was to chip away the excess… to reveal. He needed to be in tune with God’s will, and whenever the spirit came upon him, Michelangelo worked in a frenzy, often for days on end without sleep.
The picture above is the so-called Awakening Prisoner seems to be stretching after a long nap, still tangled in the “bedsheets” of uncarved rock. He’s the least finished of the Prisoners – more block than statue.
Above – the Young Prisoner is more clearly defined. He buries his face in his forearm, while his other arm is chained behind him. By the way, the names of these statues are given by art scholars, not Michelangelo.
The Prisoners give us a glimpse of Michelangelo’s fitful sculpting process, showing the restless energy of someone possessed. Getting close to the statues lets you really see the rough surface of the stone. Michelangelo had to battle the hard marble to create the image he saw in his mind’s eye. You can still see the grooves from the chisel, and you can picture Michelangelo hacking away in a cloud of dust. Unlike most sculptors, who built a model and then marked up their block of marble to know where to chip, Michelangelo always worked freehand, starting form the front and working back. these figures emerge from the stone (as his colleague Vasari put it) “as though surfacing from a pool of water.”
The Prisoners were designed for the never-completed tomb of Pope Julius II. (Julius also commissioned the Sistine Chapel ceiling). Michelangelo may have abandoned them simply because the project itself petered out, but he may have deliberately left them unfinished. Perhaps he was satisfied he’s accomplished what he set out to do, then, seeing no point in polishing them into their shiny, finished state, he lost interest and went on to a new project.
The Bearded Prisoner – above – is the most finished of the four, with all four limbs, a bushy face, and even a hint of daylight between his arm and body.
The Atlas Prisoner carries the unfinished marble on his stooped shoulders, his head still encased in the block.
Notice Michelangelo’s love and understanding for the human body. His greatest days were spent sketching the muscular, tanned, and sweating bodies of the workers in the Carrara marble quarries (west of Florence near the Cinque Terre). The Prisoner’s heads and faces are the least-developed part -the statues “speak” with their poses. Comparing the restless, claustrophobic Prisoners with the serene and confident David gives an idea of the sheer emotional range in Michelangelo’s work. The chisel grooves and the rough marble are reminders of how difficult it is to conceive a form, hew it out of solid marble, and then polish it to completion.
This unfinished Pieta’ might conceivably be by Michelangelo but is more likely by his followers. It is done in the Master’s style. It captures the moment when Jesus, who’s been crucified, is being brought down from the cross by his loved ones. They struggle to hold up the sagging body of Christ. It’s clear the artist took some liberties with realism to emphasize the emotional impact. Look at Christ’s massive arm – it’s almost the same size as his legs, which are now bent and broken. This makes the statue top-heavy, exaggerating the dead weight of Christ’s now lifeless body. And the figure of Jesus is oversized – if he stood up, he’d be over seven feet tall. It all serves to drive home the point that Christ – while divine – suffered a very human death.
Though Florence is best known for Renaissance statues and paintings, this last exhibit is a reminder of another enlightened aspect of the city’s cultural heritage – music. And the city’s musical legacy remained a cultural force long after Michelangelo.
Between 1400 and 1700, Florence was one of Europe’s most sophisticated cities, and the Medici rulers were trendsetters. 17th-century musicians like Scaratti and Handel flocked to Florence and the court of Prince Ferdinando de Medici.
You’ll find a small but choice selection of late-Renaissance instruments. Some are familiar – cellos, dulcimers, violins. Others, like some of the woodwind instruments, are weird and now obsolete.
The collection highlight is the next room. Florence was on the cutting edge of technology that invented the modern piano. Here you’ll see several experimental keyboards, both harpsichords and early pianos. Some are by Florence’s keyboard pioneer, Bartolomeo Cristofori. As the exhibits point out, the breakthrough in keyboard technology was how to the make the string ring. The harpsichord plucked the string… the new piano hit with a padded hammer.
That meant you could strike it either soft (piano in Italian) or hard (forte). By 1700, they’d invented an instrument that could play both soft and loud: they called it the “piano-forte” – what we call, simply, the piano. Here in this room, find the tallest piano on display. That instrument from 1739, is considered by some to the be the world’s first upright piano. (below).
From music to sculpture to painting and more, the city of Florence was Europe’s cultural center for three centuries. With Michelangelo as its chief ambassador, Florence exported Renaissance values to Europe and beyond.