‘David’ on her shoulders

To tourists in Florence, Italy, Michelangelo’s marble sculpture of the lad who slew Goliath is a must-see attraction at the Galleria dell’Accademia. More than a million people visit it every year.

To art historians, “David” is a seminal masterpiece -- the first of Michelangelo’s surviving depictions of heroic male nudes that encapsulate physical power in breathtakingly beautiful form.

To sculpture conservator Cinzia Parnigoni, “David” is the job of a lifetime, but the prospect of giving the 17-foot-tall, 6-ton statue a bath was almost too much to take.

“The first time I looked at his eyes, I felt annihilated,” she said Wednesday afternoon in a lecture at the Getty Research Institute, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Italian Cultural Institute. Parnigoni always establishes emotional relationships with the artworks she treats, but “David” inspired more than the usual palpitations. “My heart was beating so fast I had to climb down and take a taxi home,” she said. “My doctor had to administer 20 drops of a tranquilizer.”

Jet-lagged but energetic, Parnigoni spoke in rapid-fire Italian while most of the audience listened to a simultaneous English translation on headsets. The small auditorium, which seats 80, was packed with conservators, curators and scholars and sprinkled with a few members of the public. Hopeful attendees who hadn’t made reservations were turned away.

Parnigoni treated her audience to a brief history of the famous sculpture’s afflictions and a more detailed account of her restoration, concluded in May 2004 -- just before the artwork’s 500th birthday.

Michelangelo, who would become a giant of the Italian Renaissance, was just 26 when he began to work on “David.”

He had returned to his home in Florence after triumphantly establishing himself in Rome as the creator of the Pieta, a marble sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding her dead son, now at St. Peter’s Basilica. He produced several sculptures during his 1501-05 sojourn in Florence, but “David” is the masterpiece of that period.

Michelangelo used a huge block of marble that had been rejected by two other artists because of its flaws. He began carving in 1501 and finished the work in January 1504. Five months later it was placed in front of Palazzo Vecchio, on Florence’s central Piazza della Signoria. The artist knew that placing the sculpture outside would put it in harm’s way, Parnigoni said, but he insisted that it have a prestigious position. The sculpture stayed put until 1873, when it was moved indoors to its present location. A copy has long since replaced the original “David” on the Piazza della Signoria.

“David” suffered a slew of indignities during its outdoor life. It was struck by lightning in 1512, hit by rocks during a popular uprising in 1527 and defaced by birds for 369 years. Rain, dust and pollution also took a large toll as they settled into crevices and encrusted surfaces. The statue was cleaned in 1813 and 1843, but the treatment is thought to have done as much harm as good. Acid used in the process had a corroding effect and stiff-bristled brushes left scratches on the marble, Parnigoni said.

“David” being “David,” the recent restoration sparked a huge controversy over whether it should be cleaned and, if so, how. In 2002, after 11 years of research and scientific analysis, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Italy’s primary restoration institute for marble and other stone, determined that a cleaning was in order. But that led to heated arguments about whether a dry method, using brushes, swabs and cloth to wipe away dirt, was better than a wet method, using water to dissolve the grime.

Another Italian conservator, Agnese Parronchi, who advocated the dry method, initially got the job. But she resigned in March 2003 after a disagreement with her superiors, who favored the wet approach.

Parnigoni took over in September 2003 and began the tedious process of cleaning the statue -- “millimeter by millimeter,” as she put it, over 209 square feet of surface.

The primary task was to remove dirt and remnants of wax that had been applied as a protective coat. She dusted the surface and applied small compresses of distilled water, cellulose pulp and a clay-like material over squares of thin paper. The compresses were left on the marble for 5 to 20 minutes, depending on the thickness and tenacity of the dirt, Parnigoni said. She removed bits of wax with cotton swabs soaked in alcohol. She also cut away excess plaster that had been used to repair old cracks and applied a new mixture of marble dust, fine sand and hydraulic lime.

Parnigoni finished her work on schedule, but the project will never be finished.

“The natural process of aging has started again,” she said. “All we can do is slow down the process.”

She and her colleagues are developing a proposal for the maintenance of “David,” but they face constant challenges, big and small.

Among the big ones: The museum needs a new air-conditioning system.

And the small ones?

“On one of my visits,” she said, “I had to remove small spiders who decided to live on top of David’s head.”