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Why you will never look at David's nose the same way.
Everyone was a critic in Renaissance Florence. While citizens agreed in 1504 that
Michelangelo's David was a masterpiece, a few local artists carped that there were
flaws in the statue – the right hand was a touch too big, the neck a little bit
long, the left shin over-sized and something about the left buttock was not quite
right.
A story from the time recounts that Piero Soderino, the head of the powerful Florentine
Republic, even told the famously irascible Michelangelo that David's nose was much
too large. Michelangelo then hid some marble dust in his hand, climbed back up his
ladder and pretended to do some more "chiseling" on the offending proboscis. While
he did so, he let some marble dust fall from his hand. The pompous Soderino was
fooled – he examined the unchanged nose and announced it was much improved and far
more "life-like."
Curiously, nose stories play a big part in Michelangelo's life. When he was a 16-year-old
student in the Medici Palace, his brusque, rude manner offended a certain Pietro
Torrigiano. Torrigiano punched Michelangelo square on the nose: "I felt bone and
cartilage go down like biscuit beneath my knuckles," Torrigiano gloated, "and this
mark of mine he will carry to the grave." Indeed, for the rest of his life, Michelangelo's
nose was disfigured at the bridge, making his notoriously unkempt, grizzled face
look even more wild and unappealing than ever.
The historian Paul Barosky adds a curious footnote to these nose sagas. In Florentine
slang, the nose is often used as a euphemism for another prominent part of the male
anatomy. Thus, in the famous 1504 dispute, Soderino might not have ordered Michelangelo
to reduce the size of David's nose but this other organ, which the storyteller was
too polite to directly name. Indeed, some early viewers of David were so offended
by the statue's casual nudity that the city council commissioned a gold fig leaf
to make it more modest; but after a few years, it was quietly removed.
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