Cast of Michelangelo's David
Clemente Papi, after Michelangelo · about 1856, after an original of 1501 to 1504
Michelangelo's David stands more than five metres tall at the end of the Weston Cast Court, surrounded by copies of Italy's great doorways, pulpits and tombs. He is the young shepherd of the Bible in the moment before he fights Goliath, sling over his shoulder, weight on one leg, brow furrowed as he watches an enemy we cannot see. The original was carved from a single block of marble in Florence between 1501 and 1504 and became the symbol of that city's republic. This plaster copy, cast by the Florentine specialist Clemente Papi, gives Londoners the same figure at the same size without the crowds of Florence.
Stand close and look at the hands, which Michelangelo made deliberately large, and at the veins standing out on the back of the right hand where the tension gathers. The head is also slightly too big for the body, because the statue was designed to be seen from far below on the cathedral roofline. A cast records the surface of the original exactly, so every chisel mark and every trace of weathering on the marble in 1856 is preserved here, including damage from a riot in 1527 when a bench thrown from a window broke the left arm.
The cast was a gift from the Grand Duke of Tuscany to Queen Victoria in 1857, and the story goes that she was so shocked by the nudity that a plaster fig leaf half a metre high was made to hang on the figure for royal visits. The fig leaf survives and is displayed in a case nearby. The Cast Courts were restored and reopened in 2018, and David was cleaned to reveal the pale surface that had darkened under a century of London soot.
Did You Know? The detachable plaster fig leaf made for Queen Victoria's visits is kept in a small case behind the statue.
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