It’s not every day that you manage to convince your husband to meet someone you’ve had a crush on for decades and have never even `met yourself. May 11, 2025 was to be that day for me. We had a date at the Galleria dell’Accademia at 4pm, and I was nervous. I couldn’t believe this was happening. It was miraculous enough that we found ourselves in Florence, Italy, but this… this was the pinnacle. I couldn’t imagine climbing any higher.
When we walked in, the place was packed, but we weren’t mere tourists. We had an appointment (which is the only way to go, trust me). We skipped the line and waded through a veritable sea of humanity. That’s when I saw him.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that my heart and lungs stopped for a second. Time seemed to freeze. All the noise and chaos disappeared. All I could do was stare. David didn’t see me, but, oh, I saw him. I will savor and cherish that moment for the rest of my life.
I was brought back to my senses, rather harshly, by the impatient people who were pushing past me. Instead of approaching slowly and with reverence, I was forced to match their pace or risk being trampled underfoot. (Oh, to go in after hours and sleep at his feet, waking up occasionally to see how the light transformed him as the full moon transited above his skylight…)
But you know what? I’m going to save the best for last. I’ll tell you more about our date with David at the end of this post. Let me begin by telling you about a few other things we admired at the Accademia.
The further away you get from David, the thinner the crowds become. I strongly suspect David is the only reason a lot of people visit this place. To them, I’d say, “But wait. There’s more.”
For starters, Accademia houses many other sculptures by Michelangelo. The ones that fascinated me the most (aside from David) were the four Prisoners. Michelangelo never called these four unfinished works the Prisoners, mind you. They have become known by that name because they all appear to be trapped within the stone, dying to get out. They were originally intended to grace the tomb of Pope Julius II, the pope who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo did not intentionally abandon these prisoners. It’s just that plans for the pope’s tomb kept getting scaled down over time, until there was simply no room for these statues. (Imagine rejecting a Michelangelo!) That, and Michelangelo kept getting pulled away to work on other projects, whether he wanted to or not.
What I like about these Prisoners is that they really give you insight into Michelangelo’s carving process. You can still see his chisel marks in most cases, and you can also see that he was freeing the sculpture from the stone rather than trying to bend the stone to his will as many other artists do. That, in my opinion, is a great deal of what made him such a master. He worked in concert with nature. He didn’t try to rule over it.
I also like the bronze bust of Michelangelo which was created by Daniele da Volterra in 1565, a year after my artistic hero’s death. This is said to be a faithful representation of Michelangelo in his later years. You can almost feel the sadness coming off of it.
Another interesting area within the Accademia is the Museum of Musical Instruments. It houses the Grand Ducal Collection of about 50 instruments from the 17th through the 19th centuries. These gorgeous, hand-crafted instruments are works of art. There’s even a 1716 tenor viola by Stradivari in there somewhere, but shockingly, both Dear Husband and I seemed to have neglected to take a photograph of what was probably the most expensive musical instrument we have ever encountered.
Did you know that the piano (which they call the pianoforte) was invented in Italy? This museum houses several iterations of it, including the very first one, built for the Medici in 1688, which you see here:
There were also clarinets, flutes, cymbals, xylophones, drums, and hurdy-gurdies, as well as a sea trumpet and a serpentone (both of which I absolutely have to look further into for a future blog post). I’m including some of the other piano iterations and harpsichords in this group of photos as well. My favorite one was the space saving upright one. Isn’t it a beauty?
Are you already missing David? I know I am. (He gets that a lot.) Hold your horses. One other room to describe first. This one was recommended by Atlas Obscura. It’s called the Gipsoteca Bartolini. This part of Accademia used to be the friary hospital of San Matthew. It was turned into a gallery so that art students could study great sculptures of the past. Lorenzo Bartolini, a great sculptor and a professor there, made these plaster casts in the 19th century, and they’re really fascinating to behold.
A lot of the casts have nail holes in them, which gives them a rather creepy air. It had something to do with… well, a process I don’t understand at all. (For what it’s worth, I tried to find a demonstration online to no avail.) To quote accademia.org, “All these elegant models were obtained by clay: nails were inserted into the model at regular intervals because they were fundamental when the block of marble was rough-hewn in order to have precise references for the different depths to obtain.”
In addition, there’s another room full of award-winning works that students did based on the casts you first looked at. Having so many works lined up side by side also lets you study the evolution in clothing and hairstyles between Neoclassicism and Romanticism. This section of Accademia is kind of like a sculpture time capsule.
There are paintings in the Accademia as well. Really, there are. But our time was limited. I personally only took these two detail images. I guess I only had eyes for David. The good news is, as with most museums these days, this one has an amazing website, full of images, virtual tours, and videos, so I strongly urge you to check it out if you are interested in a deeper dive than I’m giving you here.
But let’s get back to David, the sculpture of my dreams. Michelangelo worked on him from 1501 to 1504. He (Michelangelo, not David) was 29 years old when the work was completed. He (David, not Michelangelo) is 17 feet tall and made of Carrara marble. The original plan was to make it one of the buttress statues on the Florence Cathedral, but, weighing in at 8.5 tons, it turned out to be too heavy, so instead it was placed in the public piazza.
It was damaged during a riot in 1527, when an arm was knocked off by some flying furniture. Sometime around 1810, restorers decided to protect the statue by covering it in hot wax. In 1843, they realized that this had been a really bad idea and decided to remove the wax—by using hydrochloric acid, which, of course, was an equally bad idea. At some point, someone finally realized that it might be a good idea to get the statue out of the elements, and it was moved to the Accademia in 1873.
In 1910, a replica was installed in the public piazza, and I’m here to tell you it’s horrible. Seriously, Florence should be ashamed. I hope people don’t visit the city and go away thinking that monstrosity is the original. That would be tantamount to an artistic crime against humanity. It would be like trying to pass off gummy bears as Maine lobster. There’s also a bronze copy in the Piazzale Michelangelo that overlooks Florence, and it’s better than the other replica, but still meh, in my opinion. (Pity the poor traveler who doesn’t do his homework.)
The only real criticism one could aim at the original statue of David is that his hands are way out of proportion to the rest of his body. In his defense, that was intentional. By Michelangelo’s time, artists and architects (and he happened to be both) had mastered the concept (and mathematics) of perspective. Michelangelo thought David would be high up on the cathedral’s buttress. If we had been gazing up at him from that distance, his hands would have looked proportionate.
Big hands or not. I’m grateful that we got to see him up close. At a distance, one could never appreciate the fact that this statue is more alive than any other statue on earth. You can practically see David breathing, and watch the blood coursing through his veins. His expression changes depending upon your oh-so-fortunate line of sight. You can see his determination. You note the tension in his muscles, and you expect him to spring into action and slay Goliath right before your very eyes. If someone told me that he wanders around the museum after hours, I wouldn’t be particularly surprised.
David does have some flaws. You can see some damage to his upper back, because 4 boys from rich families threw stones at him right after he was placed in the town piazza. He’s also getting some cracks in his ankles as his center of gravity is a few degrees off.
In 1991, a deranged man named Piero Cannata took a hammer to the statue and did a tiny bit of toe damage on David’s left foot. Visitors to the museum restrained the misguided man until the police arrived. In the chaos, three visitors tried to make off with chips of marble in their pockets, but they were caught. (I always picture David hopping around while holding the violated foot and going, “Ouch! That hurt! What did I ever do to you?”)
Cannata later claimed that a 16th-centery Venetian woman in a painting ordered him to do what he did. (Hate when that happens.) He spent the next 11 years in a mental hospital. Some sources say that he’s been back to visit David since then, but I couldn’t confirm the accuracy of those reports.
At various points in its history, a fig leaf has been placed over David’s private parts to mollify the prudish. Yes, he is naked. But in my opinion, he is too exquisite to be sexualized. He’s the embodiment of beauty, and it feels as if clothing of any type, on David, would be unnatural. Anyone who gets past the pure awe and admiration for this masterpiece and still has the emotional space to enter the realm of shock, disgust, or outrage at his nudity is simply trying too hard, and needs to get a hobby.
A fun fact: Look closely at David’s fine details. The veins in the hands, for example. And then contemplate the fact that Michelangelo used no flat chisels, ever, on this piece. None at all.
It was hard saying goodbye to David, knowing that odds are quite good that I’ll never get to see him again. He didn’t appear overly upset by that prospect, but I still get goosebumps whenever I think of our brief encounter. Dear Husband doesn’t seem to be jealous, but I’m not going to rub his nose in it. The man deserves his dignity. I will admit, though, that occasionally, I’ll think of David, smile, and whisper, “We’ll always have Florence.”
May you have a Happy Valentine’s Day, Dear Reader. Hopefully with someone you’ve had a crush on for a long time, if that’s something you want in life.
Sources:
La Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze
Wikipedia—Galleria dell’Accademia
Wikipedia—Serpent (Instrument)
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