On this day, Michelangelo’s masterpiece David, a colossal 5.17 metre high marble statue, was unveiled in Piazza della Signoria next to the entrance to Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of Florence’s civic government. Rolled on fourteen greased logs by more than forty men, it took four days to complete the 0.8 km journey from the workshop. The statue was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of twelve prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, but as it neared completion, the Florentine authorities realised there would be little possibility of raising the statue weighing approximately 8.5 tons to the roof of the cathedral. In later years, when speaking of his early commissions sculpting marble, Michelangelo declared that he was merely liberating figures that were already existent in the stone, and that he could see them in his mind’s eye.
My old friend Michelangelo… My grandfather used to call him Miky, and his friend Walt invented a cartoon about a very clever mouse, calling him Miky in honor of Michelangelo.
Wasn’t it your grandfather who used to buy him a “seltz al limone” at the drinks kiosk in Piazza Michelangelo on Friday mornings?
Yes, he was! Always a copule of glasses of “deep-iced seltz al limone” at the kiosk. That kiosk closed down 10 years ago because of the climate change… Due to rising temperatures from global warming, it could no longer keep its ice from melting…
I remember it well. A sad day for humanity.