Myths and Marble

As you enter the main hall of the Gallerie d’Accademia he’s there, standing calmly and proudly, even haughtily, knowing you are there staring in wonder, just as everyone has for centuries and will for centuries more. David’s placement helps. He is there under the dome, in his own spotlight: the nexus of the entire building. He is glorious, and, as Michelangelo hinted at, you could see that he must have been trapped in a block of stone as some of the other statues, whose freedom was entirely granted, and who strain against their prison. All his dopplegangers around the city, around the world, staring out of magazines don’t prepare you for the reality. You can’t really see the Mona Lisa, hidden and barricaded as it is by the throngs, but David is right there and the closer you get, the more you realize that if he breathed and moved you wouldn’t be surprised. You swear that if you could touch the stone, it would be warm.

In the majority of pictures, you only get the front view, but he is a statue and you have the chance to move around him; however, in deference to the usual view you don’t have the distance to back up and appreciate Michelangelo’s work. You are left craning to see, and the details that are no doubt in the back and the shoulders are absent. There are reasons that statues are meant to be public, and to have space around them as they do in the Piazza del Signora, and where one of David’s copies stands, calmly watching the struggles going on around him.

In that he is quite unlike other famous statues that stand in the Piazza: Cellini’s Perseus and Giambologna’s Hercules and the Centaur. They are not calm but violent and terrifying. Persues stands holding up the Gorgon’s head, blood pouring out, her body twisted under his foot, one hand reaching back impossibly to grasp a leg broken back, her neck a fountain of gore. Even the models in the Bargello impress with their frozen horror and you almost want to look away. Hercules grasps the centaur in his left arm, his hand wrapped around the throat, bending the human torso back like a bridge about to snap. His left arm is raised high, a cudgel poised to smash down. The horse body of the centaur is folded back and under Hercules, his arm hopelessly grasping at Hercules’s hand. It’s the expressions that hold your attention: the centaur’s mouth is open, no doubt mutely screaming and you can see that he knows he is about to die. Hercules’s face is grim and furious determination, scowling down at his foe.

It’s not surprising to me that painting can seem so much like life: it can play with perspective and lighting, and is very much a single, subjective moment. But a statue must affect you whatever the viewpoint you take. The effects of these three different statues is quite amazing. I feel I could look at David for hours, come back when I need to calm down, relax. Perseus and Hercules I am drawn to by their violent power, but I can’t look at them for more than a few hours.