LA GALERIA DELL'ACCADEMIA, DAVID & CASA BUONARROTI

Tina Picotes visits Casa Buonarroti

Today, Tina Picotes and her friends have visited the La Galleria dell'Accademia where they have contemplated the famous statue of David, sculpted by Michelangelo. They have enjoyed the art of Renaissance in Tuscany visiting this museum, one of the most important in Europe.

After visiting the museum, Tina and her friends have gone to Casa Buonarroti, Michelangelo's home -now a museum- and they have discovered where lived one of the genius of the universal art. In a few days, they are going to visit Caprese in Arezzo, and they are going to discover more things about this incredible artist.

Before going to the museums, The Grandma has studied two new lessons of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 5).

More information: Colloсations and fixed expressions 2

The Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze, or Gallery of the Academy of Florence, is an art museum in Florence, Tuscany. It is best known as the home of Michelangelo's sculpture David. It also has other sculptures by Michelangelo and a large collection of paintings by Florentine artists, mostly from the period 1300–1600, the Trecento to the Late Renaissance. It is smaller and more specialized than the Uffizi, the main art museum in Florence. It adjoins the Accademia di Belle Arti or academy of fine arts of Florence, but despite the name has no other connection with it.

The Galleria dell'Accademia was founded in 1784 by Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

 More information: Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze

In 2001 the Museo degli strumenti musicali collection opened. It includes musical instruments made by Stradivarius, Niccolò Amati and Bartolomeo Cristofori.

Contemplating Michelangelo's sculpture David

The Galleria dell'Accademia has housed the original David by Michelangelo since 1873.

The sculpture was allegedly brought to the Accademia for reasons of conservation, although other factors were involved in its move from its previous outdoor location on Piazza della Signoria.

The original intention was to create a Michelangelo museum, with original sculptures and drawings, to celebrate the fourth centenary of the artist's birth. Today, the gallery's small collection of Michelangelo's work includes his four unfinished Prisoners, intended for the tomb of Pope Julius II, and a statue of Saint Matthew, also unfinished. In 1939, these were joined by a Pietà discovered in the Barberini chapel in Palestrina, though experts now consider its attribution to Michelangelo to be dubious.

The David in the Accademia is the original. There is a replica in the Piazza della Signoria.

  

More information: Accademia

Other works on display are Florentine paintings from the 13th and 16th centuries, including works by Paolo Uccello, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli and Andrea del Sarto; and, from the High Renaissance, Giambologna's original full-size plaster modello for the Rape of the Sabine Women. As well as a number of Florentine Gothic paintings, the gallery houses the collection of Russian icons assembled by the Grand Dukes of the House of Lorraine, of which Leopoldo was one.

David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created in marble between 1501 and 1504 by the Italian artist Michelangelo.

David is a 5.17-metre marble statue of the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence.

More information: Visit Florence

David was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, but was instead placed in a public square, outside the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of civic government in Florence, in the Piazza della Signoria where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504.

Michelangelo's sculpture David

The statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, in 1873, and later replaced at the original location by a replica. 

Because of the nature of the hero it represented, the statue soon came to symbolize the defence of civil liberties embodied in the Republic of Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the hegemony of the Medici family. The eyes of David, with a warning glare, were turned towards Rome.

On 25 January 1504, when the sculpture was nearing completion, Florentine authorities had to acknowledge there would be little possibility of raising the more than six-ton statue to the roof of the cathedral. They convened a committee of 30 Florentine citizens that comprised many artists, including Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli, to decide on an appropriate site for David.

More information: Florence Museum

While nine different locations for the statue were discussed, the majority of members seem to have been closely split between two sites. One group, led by Giuliano da Sangallo and supported by Leonardo and Piero di Cosimo, among others, believed that, due to the imperfections in the marble, the sculpture should be placed under the roof of the Loggia dei Lanzi on Piazza della Signoria; the other group thought it should stand at the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria, the city's town hall, now known as Palazzo Vecchio.

Another opinion, supported by Botticelli, was that the sculpture should be situated on or near the cathedral.

In June 1504, David was installed next to the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, replacing Donatello's bronze sculpture of Judith and Holofernes, which embodied a comparable theme of heroic resistance. It took four days to move the statue the half mile from Michelangelo's workshop into the Piazza della Signoria. Later that summer the sling and tree-stump support were gilded, and the figure was given a gilded loin-garland.

 More information: My Modern Met

In 1873, the statue of David was removed from the piazza, to protect it from damage, and displayed in the Accademia Gallery, Florence, where it attracted many visitors. A replica was placed in the Piazza della Signoria in 1910. 

Joseph visits La Galleria dell'Accademia, Firenze

In 1991, a mentally disturbed artist named Piero Cannata attacked the statue with a hammer he had concealed beneath his jacket; in the process of damaging the toes of the left foot, he was restrained.

On 12 November 2010, a fiberglass replica of the David was installed on the roofline of Florence Cathedral, for one day only. Photographs of the installation reveal the statue the way the Operai who commissioned the work originally expected it to be seen.

In 2010, a dispute over the ownership of David arose when, based on a legal review of historical documents, the municipality of Florence claimed ownership of the statue in opposition to the Italian Culture Ministry, which disputes the municipality claim.

In the mid 1800s, small cracks were noticed on the left leg on David which can possibly be attributed to an uneven sinking of the ground under the massive statue.

 More information: Breaking News English

Casa Buonarroti is a museum in Florence. The building was a property owned by, but never occupied by, the sculptor Michelangelo, which he left to his nephew, Lionardo Buonarroti.

The house was converted into a museum dedicated to the artist by his great nephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger. Its collections include two of Michelangelo's earliest sculptures, the Madonna of the Steps and the Battle of the Centaurs. A ten-thousand strong library has accumulated there over the centuries, which includes the family's archive and some of Michaelangelo's letters and drawings.

More information: Casa Buonarroti

Every block of stone has a statue inside it

and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Michelangelo