The Nude Beauty

A copy of Michelangelo's David stands on a pedestal outside the Palazzo Vecchio, his curly head and thick shoulders vulnerable to Florentine pigeons, air pollution and other vagaries of the modern city. Though the outdoor statue isn't the real thing, it gives visitors the chance to see David in its original location. Outside the medieval Florentine city hall, the David symbolized the civic duty and strength of Republican Florence soon after it expelled its Medici rulers in the 16th century.

The marble David that Michelangelo Buonnaroti himself sculpted beginning at age 25 from 1501-1504 has its own gallery in the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence. It was moved there in 1873, and the copy erected outdoors about a decade later. A plexiglass barrier was built around it after a man chipped at the statue's toes with a hammer in 1991.

Why is the David so famous? People around the world recognize his face, his body shows up on coffee mugs, t-shirts, and even refrigerator magnets with an assortment of modern magnetic clothing. If Michelangelo was alive today, the merchandising of the David would've made him a wealthy man.

Putting aside the commercialization of David, a look at the statue reveals just what has touched people for 500 years. The David is a celebration of the male body. It represents an ideal human beauty that classic Greek and Roman art portrayed, and which surfaced again in the Italian Renaissance. Yet the David was not a total swing away from medieval biblical themes in art. David was biblical, a young shepherd who slew the giant goliath and went on to become a just Hebrew king. Michelangelo took this potent story and sculpted another-- and perhaps the greatest-- in a long line of artwork that told the David and Goliath story.

When Michelangelo chipped at the block of marble that would become the David, chances are he didn't know exactly what he was sculpting. Michelangelo believed that a piece of stone or marble held the potential for a statue inside of it, that the sculptor's task was to release the soul of the stone with his chisel.

Controversy has been a part of David since it was first put on display in the Piazza della Signoria. If you hadn't noticed, David doesn't wear a scrap of clothing. That's okay for the Italians, but over the years, copies of David installed in homes and public places around the world have had the addition of the infamous fig leaf to cover the genitalia and pubic hair. There´s even a story of an un-figged poster of David in Australia confiscated by police and declared an obscenity.

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