By Jess Mitchell
Photo courtesy of FUA
More than the paintings, more than the architecture, nothing fascinated me more than David’s right hand.
It was the veins that interested me. They slithered down his arm and bulged around his knuckles. They were different from the veins that popped out of the papery skin of the elderly. These veins were visible because of strain, I thought, the work of a shepherd. I wanted to run my finger along the hand and feel the life that pulsed from it.
Art is like magic. It draws on the life we know and adds elements from another place or dimension or world, so that when we walk past a piece, the familiar and the alien work together to capture our attention.
It took a while for that magic to work on me when I went to the Uffizi and Academia. But then I met David. The hand, the veins, the eyes that you wished would glance at you, they wove a story together. There was a sense of life, of a miracle, right before me, and it demanded a response.
My response was to become a photojournalist.
Throughout the Academia and Uffizi, I began to see the statues and paintings as snapshots in time. They were the best types of models because they never sneezed or blinked. I could shoot around them, stare at them for uncomfortably long periods of time, and dig up their stories. David’s story was that he had arrived at the stream to pick his stones to fight Goliath, and he paused in his work to survey his home as he prepared for battle.
Art asks us to meet it halfway, in a special place between reality and imagination. I met art through a right hand, a camera, and a story. And through them, I saw beauty.
Suggestions:
The original David statue sculpted by Michelangelo is housed at the Galleria dell’Accademia. Copies of the statue can be also admired in panoramic locations such as Palazzo Vecchio (where it was originally placed) and Piazzale Michelangelo.
Details on the background, creative process, and historic currents of Michelangelo’s David provided by the Accademica can be consulted before visiting the statue.