News

Thursday 28th July 2005

"A large audience gathered in the Ian Fairbairn Lecture Hall on the evening of Tuesday 26th July to hear University of Buckingham Fellow, Dr. Joachim Strupp, present his lecture entitled Michelangelo's David: The making and breaking of a macho man . With the help of slides, he set the scene in Renaissance Florence - artistically vibrant though politically unstable. As Joachim described the changing regimes, I thought of Dante's comment that Florence was like a man with fever, twisting and turning in his bed in a vain attempt to get comfortable. In such a place, the image of David - the beautiful young boy whose slingshot despatched the horrid giant Goliath - was bound to be controversial. What David represented and indeed what Goliath represented varied according to who was in power.

But there was more to it than that. Michelangelo's David, who recently celebrated his 500th birthday, was not just politically sensitive. He was also naked. This enormous marble statue - some 18 feet high and the largest male nude created since Antiquity - appeared highly erotic. From the ground, the viewer's eyes are drawn, whether reluctantly or eagerly, to the obvious place. Once the statue was finished, debate raged: should David be in a public place, put in a secluded courtyard, indoors or out, should his modesty be protected by a metal girdle, would he be safe from attack...?

Perhaps the most interesting part of Joachim's lecture concerned David's later career. We learned of the plaster-cast presented to Queen Victoria and of the decision to add two hooks from which a fig-leaf could be suspended when the Queen came to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Astonishingly, the fig-leaf was to have a career of its own and recently made an 'independent' tour of the United States. In the last few years, David has become an icon - used to promote men's underwear and more unlikely products. He even became the central character in an episode of The Simpsons. There were not many questions at the end. The audience seemed rather stunned; but that is often the way when Joachim lectures."

The next public lecture is on a related theme: Breaking the rules: Michelangelo as an architect . This will be given by Dr Nicola Smith, Fellow of the University of Buckingham, at 18:30 in the Ian Fairbairn Lecture Hall on Tuesday 2nd August 2005.