Galleria dell Academmia

Our 2nd Saturday night takes us to see Michelangelo's David, with few people in attendance. At 17 feet high, carving from an abandoned 6-tonne piece of Carrera marble, Michelangelo won the contract to depict The Hero, in 1500, as a 26 year old virtually unknown sculptor. He chose David, of the David and Goliath story, and for Florentines, this came to represent their own struggle against being swallowed up by Rome. When it was completed 3 years later, 30 representatives of all the Art Guilds decided on where it would be placed, as long as David's defiant gaze was towards Rome.

(For scale, Marc, bottom right)

What has intrigued Marc and I about Michelangelo is that he was the first artist to study the human form from dissecting cadavers (done at night and in secret), tearing apart the muscle, bone and vein systems, which happened here in Florence, at the local hospital we've seen the outside of. You see the results of this study in his painting of the human form as well as the gracefulness of his marble statues. They really are very different to the eye, a moment stopped in time, more than anyone else before him. From behind, and David's hand:

Beyond David, the Academmia is also home to a small musical instrument collection, a small representation of the collection of instruments built for and owned by the Medici's. Included in this is the first  piano ever built!, by Bartomelo Cristofori  in 1700

A set of Stradeveri violins, crafted by the  famous luthier from northern Italy,  born in 1644. He Is thought to have produced 1,116 violins in his lifetime, of which 650 survive. The theory goes that the extraordinary sound brought forth by a Stradeverius violin is because of the wood used, from this point of time, wood from Croatia that has been analyzed to show density of growth at this geographic location during decades and decades of cold temperatures in the 1500 and  1600s, conditions that were not present elsewhere where luthiers were practising their craft.