Michelangelo Buonarroti
David

"Are you crazy, reviewing the David? What expertise do you have for a masterpiece like this?"

"Absolutely none... In fact, more than a review, it's a sort of reflection."

"Then why the hell did you choose one of the most prominent sculptural works in the world?"

"Just leave me alone, mind your own business, and let me write this review."

First point: apologies...

Thankfully, Michelangelo will never read this page, otherwise he would have chased me with a big club (made of marble of course) to smash my brains on the pavement.

If you can hear me, wherever you are, I ask for forgiveness, supreme Master...

Second point: the Work of Art

We are in the early 1500s, the Renaissance was embellishing cities with works destined to go down in history as some of the most astonishing ever seen before. Artists who would become true deities on earth jumped from city to city, in the service of noble and wealthy families who offered them food, lodging, money, and above all, the opportunity to express their genius by painting, sculpting, designing, and realizing true "works of art" that would leave an indelible mark burned into eternity.

Michelangelo Buonarroti was undoubtedly one of the greatest (I won't venture to call him "the greatest" or someone else from beyond might get offended, and frankly, the wrath of the Master I'm reviewing is more than enough for me) artists of the Renaissance era, an absolute genius who gifted us innumerable masterpieces, among the most significant: the "Moses", the "Pietà", the frescoes on the "Sistine Chapel Ceiling" and, certainly not least, the "David".

The "David" is precisely the subject of my reviewing reflection, sculpted between 1501 and 1504, at just 26 years old, this marble giant, carved from a block considered "useless", standing 5.17 meters tall, even just for the intuition on weight distribution to prevent a collapse, can be considered the most beautiful sculpture of all time.

It has withstood numerous "attacks" by deranged individuals, the relentless passage of time, standing majestically as if to say: "I am David, I defeated Goliath and will watch over you from my pedestal for eternity, mortals", and in front of this miracle in white marble, we "mortals" can only stand in silence, without uttering a word, just staring in a bit of a daze, mouth slightly open, and a trickle of uncontrolled saliva tracing the corners of our mouths.

In silence, to admire the perfection of proportions (and now no jokes there, please!), the tense and flexing muscles, the details of the limbs, especially the extremities, something extremely challenging to depict in both painting and sculpture, here so real that they make us think our hands and feet are, shall we say, "wrong" compared to his; the play of light that enhances the muscle relief, even the perfectly traced veins, the harmony of the forms, the neck tendons tensed to accentuate the head almost turning in profile to look disdainfully and proudly at the opponent who, shortly after, will succumb to his hand.

A statue so real that, if you create a void around it and concentrate solely on it, you get the feeling that, any moment now, it might actually step off the pedestal and walk, such is the high resolution of every minute detail and so pulverized is the concept of staticity. "David" belongs to the world's art heritage and constitutes an unattainable cornerstone, no one will ever manage to render in such a lifelike manner a body "imprisoned" in marble. It almost seems like the "genius" dusted a fine marble powder over the body of an embalmed athlete to reproduce human likeness in that way, solely with the aid of a hammer and chisel. Impressive, truly astounding, I find no other words.

It's said that the "Master" conducted true autopsies, certainly unauthorized, to fully understand and capture every little secret about the amalgamation of nerves, muscles, veins, tendons, tissue, in short, everything that constitutes the "visible engine" of the human body, enabling the harmony, naturalness, and fluidity of every single movement, all photographed in the mind and immortalized with obsessive precision in his grand works.

Years will pass, men will age and die, others will take their place, the cycle of life and death will continue relentlessly, the world will change countless times, but "David" will always remain there, to pronounce his superiority over common mortals, crushing them even with just his look, made "alive" by the master with a trick that further accentuates his brilliance: the perforation of pupils to capture light and give depth to the gaze.

It's thanks to works like this that I feel proud to shout my origins to the world... It's thanks to men like Michelangelo that our homeland is and should be considered for centuries to come the artistic cradle of the world. Thank you, Master...

THIRD POINT: the reflection

There have been moments in my life where I've thought I've got it all wrong, even the period in which I was born. Admiring works like this and realizing the noble sentiments that resided in the spirits of artists of those bygone days, I would have certainly preferred to be born where there was a cult of "beauty," of suave poetry, of immortal literature, having the chance to witness live these geniuses bringing life to canvases, blocks of marble, projects astonishing for the time and for the limited means available.

What will I leave, or rather, what will this generation leave for posterity?

Which works will be worthy of being called masterpieces? Maybe someone, on an architectural level, might tell me: the Petronas Twin Towers, honestly, I prefer the dome of S. Maria del Fiore, or for painting, the Transavantgarde, they say it's genius, but honestly, I see little genius in them, actually, they seem downright ugly compared to these, or the monstrosities (also called genius) of modern sculpture, if compared to these, they make no sense at all.

"Yes, but you have to look at the content, what they want to express, maybe what they want to evoke in those who behold them, shock, amaze, disgust, slap, awaken from the stupor... Art nowadays is something else!"

"Look, with all respect, I've always thought that the eye, when it comes to art, wants its part, indeed demands it without discounts and whatnot, I genuinely don't give a damn about shock and all the rest, an artwork must first and foremost evoke a sense of beauty, harmony, or whatever you want to call it; but in these four little shits of contemporary art, I see little beauty. It's a bit like music, you see dear, if I want to listen to something that delights my eardrums I'll play Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, or I'll blast 'all four' seasons of Vivaldi, I certainly don't dream of putting on a black metal band which, as good as they may be, I just can't align them with the word music, have patience, call me bigoted, reactionary, mammoth, Precambrian or whatever the hell you want, but that's how it is for me."

Surely there are artists who could emulate the masterpieces of the past, more or less, the study of art history mainly derives from those who made this name great, but today much more emphasis is placed on people's reactions and on what is trendy than on the taste of beauty, in every **freaking** field. Call it contemporary art, drool over these "masterpieces" which truly have little or nothing of a "master", I'll cherish the legacy the great masters of the past left for me (for us) and walk with blinders on if today someone sells me something as art that doesn't even remotely resemble it, and I would truly give anything to crack the secret of time travel and return to when the word "art" truly had meaning.

I would have sincerely preferred if the Renaissance, but not only that, had lasted forever and that the ideas and genius of those times never knew the word "evolution", but that progress stopped there, someone higher up should have set limits and planted insurmountable stakes deep in the "ground", we would have definitely benefited, seeing how things are positioned these days..

Anyway, thank you again, Master, for the immense legacy you left us..

We haven't exactly treasured it, to tell the truth..

Forgive us..