Had to make sure he was still there...

I visited David again today but this time, I explored the whole museum!

 The base he stands on is taller than I am!

 Man he's heavy....wish he hadn't decided my shoulder was the one he wanted to stand on.

And now for some other stuff in Accademia...

Bust of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra (1564)

This bronze bust, by one of Michelangelo's pupils, shows a craggy, wrinkled Michelangelo, just before his death at age 89.

Michelangelo first made his mark by sculpting the famous Pieta in St. Peter's in Rome. That convinced Florence's city fathers to trust him with the monumental project of sculpting David. For the rest of his life, Michelangelo alternated working in Florence and Rome.  When he died in 1564, Michelangelo was recognized as the greatest artist of his day, called "Il Divino" — Michelangelo the divine. He was buried in his hometown, marked by a tomb in Santa Croce, a block from his boyhood home. (I will visit this later!)

The Prisoners (from about 1516 to 1534)

Michelangelo believed the sculptor was a tool of God, not creating but simply revealing the powerful and beautiful figures God put in the marble. Michelangelo’s job was to chip away the excess.

Awakening Prisoner seems to be stretching after a long nap, still tangled in the "bedsheets" of uncarved rock. He's the least finished of the Prisoners — more block than statue.

The "Young" Prisoner is more clearly defined. He buries his face in his forearm, while his other arm is chained behind him. By the way, the names of these statues are given by art scholars, not Michelangelo. 

The Prisoners give us a glimpse of Michelangelo's fitful sculpting process, showing the restless energy of someone possessed. Michelangelo had to battle the hard marble to create the image he saw in his mind’s eye. You can still see the grooves from the chisel, and you can picture Michelangelo hacking away in a cloud of dust. Unlike most sculptors, who built a model and then marked up their block of marble to know where to chip, Michelangelo always worked freehand, starting from the front and working back. These figures emerge from the stone (as his colleague Vasari put it) “as though surfacing from a pool of water.”

Michelangelo's St. Matthew (1503). Though not one of thePrisoners series, he is also unfinished, perfectly illustrating Vasari's "surfacing" description.

The Prisoners were designed for the never-completed tomb of Pope Julius II.  Michelangelo may have abandoned them simply because the project itself petered out, but he may have deliberately left them unfinished. Perhaps having satisfied himself that he’d accomplished what he set out to do, and seeing no point in polishing them into their shiny, finished state, he lost interest and went on to a new project.

The Bearded Prisoner, is the most finished of the four, with all four limbs, a bushy face, and even a hint of daylight between his arm and body.

Across the nave on the left, the Atlas Prisoner carries the unfinished marble on his stooped shoulders, his head still encased in the block.

The Prisoners, give us insight to Michelangelo’s love and understanding of the human body. His days were spent sketching the muscular, tanned, and sweating bodies of the workers in the Carrara marble quarries (after all, he was gay).  The prisoners’ heads and faces are the least-developed part.  Comparing the restless, claustrophobic Prisoners with the serene and confident David gives an idea of the sheer emotional range in Michelangelo’s work. The chisel grooves and the rough marble are reminders of how difficult it is to conceive a form, hew it out of solid marble, and then polish it to completion.

The unfinished Pietà 

They struggle to hold up the sagging body of Christ. Christ’s massive arm is almost the size of his bent and broken legs.  If he stood up, he’d be over seven feet tall,  the weight is exaggerated, driving home the point that Christ, while divine,  suffered a very human death.

Salone dell' Ottocento

A long room crammed with plaster statues and busts that were the Academy art students' "final exams." An art school has been attached to the museum for centuries, and you may see the next Michelangelo wandering the streets nearby.

 

 Glad my head isn't up on the wall!

Giambologna's Rape of the Sabines 

The Rape of the Sabines, from 1582, is the full-sized plaster model of the finished version in the Loggia next to the Palazzo Vecchio...which was covered today however, there is some remarkable art from the 14 and 1500's in the same room.

The Museum of Musical Instruments 

This is a small selection of late-Renaissance cellos, dulcimers, violins, and harpsichords. Between 1400 and 1700, Florence was one of Europe's most sophisticated cities, and the Medici rulers were trendsetters. 17th-century musicians like Scarlatti and Handel flocked to Florence and the court of Prince Ferdinando de Medici. Look for the two paintings of the prince (he's the second from the right in both paintings).

 They show him hanging out with his musician friends. The gay prince played a mean harpsichord, and he helped pioneer new variations of the instrument. One of them is displayed here  — the 1690 spinet, invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori, that some consider to be the world's first "piano." 

Other pictures from inside the museum...paintings on wood from the 1300's.