Where is the David?

How many Davids can we find around the globe?
Have you seen the David somewhere? In a store? In a square?
If you see the David, take a picture and share it.

Where is the David?

This is an initiative launched by the Florence City Council, a contest which plans to find copies or fanciful interpretations of Michelangelo’s David in the World, Internet users are invited to photograph or film the most imaginative reworkings of the statue.
Your picture will be available online for other users and it can be part of an exhibition at Le Murate in Florence!

Michelangelo's David

David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. It is a 5.17 metre (17 foot) marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the Biblical hero David and was instead placed in Piazza della Signoria.
The statue was moved to the Accademia Gallery in Florence in 1873, and later replaced at the original location by a replica.


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Don’t forget, Find your David, Take a Picture and Share It!
See you

2011
04/15
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Art
Contemporary
Italy
Renaissance
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3D Reconstruction of Veduta della Catena, Florence

Here is the 3D reconstruction of the the famous Veduta della Catena (Chain Map). The video is going to be shown and explained by the Director of the Palazzo Vecchio Family Museum Paola Pacetti next sunday 20th February in Florence, during the eighth national meeting of Archaeologia viva.

This painting is in the historical-topographical Museum Firenze com’era.

Nineteenth Copy of the Veduta della Catena

The original print, the first known perspective map of Florence realized in 1470 and attribute to Francesco di Lorenzo Rosselli, is displayed at the Bode Museum in Berlin.

Original Chain Map (1470)

At the end of the XVth century, Florence counts 40.000 citizens.
The medieval walls surrounding the city leave out big green areas just outside a densely populated urban centre. Among the buildings, the symbols of civic and religious power stand out: Palazzo della Signoria, Palazzo del Podestà and the Cathedral, just completed with the Brunelleschi’s grandiose Dome. Close to the city walls, the houses are set all around the churches of the preaching orders of Santa Maria Novella, Santa Maria del Carmine, Santo Spirito. The Arno river, with its four medieval bridges, is lively with the intense activity animating its waters and banks. Notice how the main buildings, churches, bridges, city doors show inscriptions with their names.

2011
02/19
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Architecture
Italy
Landscape
Renaissance
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Bologna, Memorial Museum for Ustica aircraft accident

Dear friends,
yesterday I had to go to Bologna for a relatives’ meeting at the end of the Christmas holidays, and I would like to tell you what’s appened.
After a great meal, a long talk and many laughs we had a digestive walk, my relatives took me at the Memorial Museum for Ustica aircraft accident, I have ever seen the wreck on television in the news, but I couldn’t imagine the effect it would have made me to directly see it.

Memorial Museum for Ustica aircraft accident

June, 27 1980 an Italian flight suffered an in-flight explosion while in route from Bologna to Palermo, the aircraft (registered I-TIGI) crashed at 20:59 CET into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the island of Ustica about 130 km southwest of Naples. All 81 people on board were killed. After years of investigations, no official explanation or final report has been provided by the Italian government.

In Bologna on June 27, 2007 the Museum for the Memory of Ustica was opened. The museum is in possession of parts of the plane, which are assembled and on display. Almost all of the external fuselage of the plane was reconstructed. In the museum there are also objects belonging to those on board that were found in the sea near the plane.

Christian Boltanski

The aircraft wreckage is showed in a suggestive and evocative setting, suitably created by the French artist Christian Boltanski. The 81 victims of this slaughter are recalled through as many lights which turn on and off at a breath rhythm. Around the rebuilt aircraft, 81 black mirrors reflect the image of the person going along the balcony while 81 loudspeakers utter whispers, common and universal thoughts, which underline this accidental and ineluctable tragedy.

Click on the picture - You can virtually visit it now

All the objects found are contained in a wooden box covered with a black plastic skin. A small book with the photos of all objects and various information is available to the visitor upon request.

I highly recommend you to visit it at night because it’s much more touching, when the lights turn off the room is almost entirely in the dark and you can see only the silhouette of the plane like it could still fly, when the lights slowly turn on you atrociously can see it’s just a scrap.


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2011
01/09
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Art
Contemporary
Italy
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Charging Bull, Arturo Di Modica, New York City, 1989

December 16, 1989 an Italian sculptor stood without authorization a huge statue of a charging bull in front of New Stock York Exchange as a Christmas gift to the people of New York.
During the night, Arturo Di Modica, the sculptor, and thirty his friends and relatives, had managed to evade police surveillance, download the work from a rented truck and install it, in a period less than 8 minutes of the tour of the Watch.

Charging Bull - Arturo Di Modica

The same afternoon, the New York Stock Exchange rented a truck to remove the work. But the outcry initiative to ‘acclaim’ convinced the Parks Department Commissioner in New York to give a temporary site (currently in Bowling Green) the work ‘Charging Bull’ a few blocks away from the original location.

Arturo Di Modica, The Sculptor

Arturo Di Modica was born in in the small Sicilian city of Vittoria, in the province of Ragusa, January 26, 1941, the same city where the young jazz player Francesco Cafiso, the swimmer Luca Marin and Me were born. The bull, also known as the Wall Street Bull, has become the sculptor one of the most famous sculptors in the United States and operates a tourist attraction, second only to the Statue of Liberty now.

Di Modica said he created the gleaming, muscular sculpture after the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of the “strength, power and hope of the American people for the future.”

It has become a public symbol of American capitalism and of the historic Financial District. It is a good thing and a compelling piece of art. It cost the artist more than $300,000 to create, cast and install his beast. To recoup his expenses, he planned to sell other versions of the bull to cities around the world, and he has made some progress. In 2010, China was due to get its own reddish-colored charging bull in Shanghai’s financial square on the Bund.


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2010
12/08
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Contemporary
Sculpture
Sicily
U.S.A.
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Copacabana Promenade, Rio De Janeiro, Roberto Burle Marx, Brasil

Few years ago when I was a student yet, my professor of city planning told us about his dear friend who had recently died, his friend was a brasilian landscape architect called Roberto Burle Marx.
My professor knew him when he wrote a book about the beautiful gardens designed by him.

Truly I witnessed a wonderful lesson and I saw the gardens so beautiful and so loved by the Brazilian people. One in particular struck my attention, not because it was more beautiful than others, because they were all beautiful, but because I had already seen it but I didn’t remember where.
I was particularly impressed by the Copacabana Promenade in Rio De Janeiro where there is a pavement landscape in large scale (4 kilometres long).
It was completed in 1970 and has used a black and white Portuguese pavement design since its origin in the 1930s: a geometric wave.

Copacabana Promenade, Rio De Janeiro, Brasil

Where did I see it?
I dug into my memory when I was a kid and I watched many cartoons … and I finally remembered where.
I saw it in the 6th animated feature produced by Walt Disney called Saludos Amigos, in the 4th segment Aquarela do Brasil (or “Watercolor of Brazil”) where a brand-new character, José Carioca, showed Donald Duck around South America and introduced him to the samba.

Copacabana Promenade, Portuguese Pavement


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2010
11/21
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Landscape
Modern
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