ASIANOVERLAND.NET WINTER EUROPEAN DAY 9/182:  FLORENCE TO ROME, ITALY

“DAY 9, 20/12/80 FLORENCE TO ROME

“DAVID” - THE ACADEMEA

Florentine gold & silver

All relieved to arrive at 7 Hills Camp site.

The night warmed up after munchies were satisfied with Roe, Chris A & B, Robyn, Regan & Vicki B going for a record in the triple bunk!!”

Michelangelo (1475 – 1564), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the  Renaissance born in Florence, who exerted unparalleled influence on Western art. He is often considered the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival, fellow Florentine, Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo and da Vinci are probably the greatest artists of all time.

Some of Michelangelo's works of painting, sculpture and architecture are among the most famous in existence. His output in various fields was prodigious. Given the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches and reminiscences, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. He sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty. Despite holding a low opinion of painting, he also created two of the best frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and The Last Judgment on its altar wall.  At the age of 74, he was appointed as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. He transformed the plan so that the western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, after his death.

Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive (two biographies were published during his lifetime). One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was "supreme in not one art alone but in all three".

In his lifetime, Michelangelo was called "the divine one".

David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture, created by Michelangelo in marble between 1501 and 1504. David is a 5.17-metre marble statue of the Biblical figure David, a favoured subject of art in Florence.

David was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, but was instead placed in a public square, outside the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of civic government in Florence, in the Piazza della Signoria, where it was unveiled on 8 September, 1504. The statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, in 1873.

David symbolized the defence of civil liberties embodied in the Republic of Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the hegemony of the Medici family. The eyes of David, with a warning glare, were fixated towards Rome.

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