Moving David from Florence Italy

Arguably the most famous sculpture in the world, Michelangelo’s ‘David’ may be moving. While Florence is trying to manage high traffic in her central historical district, there are some people considering whether or not to move the large tourist attraction outside of the Accademia and the city center. (Pictured here is the fake ‘David’ that is exhibited in Piazza della Signoria.) Read more at:

http://theflorentine.net/
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2008/01/davids_home_is_in_florence.html

Another article I found via artsjournal.com discussed Michelangelo’s drive to be the best and conceal his efforts while becoming this (by burning most of his drawings). It is a good article, and here are a few of my favorite highlights:

The critic Waldemar Januszczak, who had the chance to scrutinise the [Sistine] ceiling from close quarters from the top of a television scaffold, wrote: "I could see the bristles from his brushes caught in the paint, and the mucky thumbprints he'd left along the margins. The first thing that impressed me was his speed. Michelangelo worked at Schumacher pace. Adam's famous little penis was captured with a single brushstroke: a flick of the wrist, and the first man had his manhood."

. . .
Before he dipped the brush in the paint and set to work on his God and Christ, his Adam and Mary and all the rest, how did Michelangelo prepare himself? We know that, unlike his peers and predecessors, he did not use cartoons to transfer existing designs directly on to the wet plaster, because there are no the telltale peg marks left in the plaster's surface. We know that in some cases he worked from small drawings because a grid can be discerned over the finished work, indicating that he upscaled from a smaller sketch.

But what the norm for his preparation was we simply don't know – because Michelangelo didn't want us to know. Throughout his life he hated showing drawings to outsiders. Vasari claimed that this was because they revealed the endless effort he expended in reaching the perfection at which he aimed. Though he was dependent, like all Renaissance artists, on the patronage of the powerful, even men like Cosimo I were unable to get him to part with a single drawing. Before moving from Rome to Florence in 1518, he burned all the drawings in his house in Rome. Another terrible bonfire took place, on his instructions, at his death. Even Michelangelo's closest friends possessed only a tiny number of drawings, all of them highly finished.

. . .
Then, even while the agonies of the tragic tomb continued to pile up, [Pope] Julius threw another amazing job at Michelangelo. The walls of the Sistine Chapel, the private chapel of the papal household, were already adorned with works by 15th-century masters including Botticelli and Perugino. The ceiling was painted blue, dotted with gold stars. The chapel had long been in disuse because of a large crack in the ceiling. Now Julius wanted it to be drastically renovated, and commanded him to paint 12 large figures of the Apostles on the ceiling.

Imagine the Sistine Chapel ceiling looking like a child’s bedroom of blue and gold heavens !!!

Read more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art-and-architecture/features/the-sistine-chapel-was-created-500-years-ago-by-michelangeloor-was-it-773079.html