The David, not your run of the mill renaissance sculpture

So there are several David's floating around the city here (well not exactly floating), and with my class last week I had the honor (with a hundred other people) of seeing the original.

The historian who gives us the tours for the Academy helped translate a book by a researcher who was studying the tools that Michelangelo used on his sculptures. Turns out he couldn't have made it any harder for himself. He grew up with a family of a Quarryman (I guess nobility sent their kids away to be raised by other families in the country) and he used to play with the quarry tools, (these are used to chip huge chunks of marble from the quarry), not to do the sculptors fine detail.

On top of that the piece of marble was a cast off piece that had been sitting behind the Duomo for 10 years or so that no one wanted because it had too much veining and it was too narrow in width, it was one that another artist had already started and so he had to design the david around what was there.

Some guy that Michelangelo, when he painted the sistine chapel he had done one other fresco in his life.

Tomorrow is our last class and we are all rushing to bring our drawings to final. I'm sad to have it end, it was a pretty amazing experience.