From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
The David Statue:
Just How Clean
Is Too Clean?
To read the press coverage of the scheduled restoration of Michelangelo's David, one of the most recognizable icons of Western art, you might think the only issue was a dispute between two middle-aged women over the affections of the naked marble man. But what is at stake is the future of our cultural inheritance. In the past, even the immediate past, some of the world's grandest artworks have been irrevocably altered in the name of cleanliness.
Last month, Agnese Parronchi, who had been hired by Antonio Paolucci, the chief superintendent of art for all of Florence and Tuscany, offered her resignation as the designated restorer. She cited irreconcilable differences with Franca Falletti, director of Florence's Accademia Museum, where the statue is housed. The media have transformed this serious division within the art community concerning how much restoration is too much into a banal shouting match.
Once it was brought out of Michelangelo's workshop, the artistic appeal of the gigantic rendering of the Old Testament hero, carved between 1501 and 1504, was so embracing that both Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael made drawings of it. Today, the David can be regarded as Italy's leading tourist attraction, and as such questions of power and turf should be regarded as subtexts.
Ms. Parronchi is widely acknowledged to be the world's leading restorer of Michelangelo's stone sculptures, having successfully achieved a dignified cleaning of the Medici Tombs in San Lorenzo with her respectful minimalist technique, and of the master's two early reliefs at the Casa Buonarroti, the Madonna of the Stairs and the Battle of the Centaurs. Her record of deliberate and reserved treatment of sculpture over the past two decades is well documented.
In dramatic contrast, Ms. Falletti's position reflects that of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, one of Italy's two national institutions devoted to restoration. My experience has been that the Opificio's cleanings of marble have been particularly radical, indicating a determination to seek whiteness and brightness at the expense of older surfaces.
Witness the Fonte Gaia in Siena, marble fountain sculptures that the Opificio cleaned recently. Like the David, the fountain--finished around 1419--had been exposed to the elements for centuries. (The David was brought indoors, while the Fonte Gaia carvings were placed in a protected loggia, more than a century ago.) The Opificio cleanings have made these sculptures by Jacopo della Quercia appear today as if they were made of gesso--that is, cheap chalky plaster, not prestigious stone.
Yes, they are clean, but at what cost? Much the same can be said for the Opificio's cleanings of the engaging 14th- and 15th-century reliefs from Florence's Bell Tower now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. The cleaned panels no longer have any sense of unity, much less the flavor of their pre-restored appearance.
The David has had a difficult history, even before it was born. Begun by Agostino di Duccio around 1465, hacked on by another sculptor in the 1470s, the vast marble block was then abandoned for decades in the courtyard of the Cathedral. It was already distressed when Michelangelo took it over in 1501. Completed three years later, David was placed at the front of the Palazzo Signoria. There it stood for 3ยต centuries, until the David was cleaned and placed indoors in 1873.
Both the Opificio and Ms. Parronchi have been examining the statue in preparation for the cleaning. Ms. Parronchi meticulously conducted 260 separate studies over the entire surface of the gigantic figure. Her proposed cleaning was essentially a "dry" one--a major dusting using a chamois cloth, an eraser and a soft sable brush. She would have worked inch by inch, reacting as the conditions required. The Opificio, by contrast, wants to employ poultices, which pull off dirt, dust, old wax and whatever else is on there from the surface. Its method assumes the entire statue needs the same treatment, but Ms. Parronchi knows from her visual studies that the sections are often in very different conditions and offer different problems.
I believe that no decisions should be made until an impartial judgment is rendered. While the Florentine authorities would like to celebrate the 500-year anniversary of the unveiling of the statue with a publicity-attracting, spruced up edition, no one claims the David's health is in imminent danger. The chief superintendent of Florence or Italy's minister of culture should establish an independent commission to study the issues and produce a report. Alternatively, the Italian courts might weigh in as defenders of public property. Or a European or international entity could intervene in this clamorous case. True masterpieces like David belong, after all, to all of mankind.
Mr. Beck, professor of art history at Columbia University, is the author of "The Three Worlds of Michelangelo" and founder of ArtWatch International (www.ArtWatchInternational.org).
