On this virtual tour of Italy, we go in search of five beautiful and significant sculptures. The tour takes us to four well-known cities.
Michelangelo, David
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Our journey begins in Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance and hometown to the father of the Italian language, the poet Dante Alighieri. Here, at the Galleria dell'Accademia, we raise our eyes to the enchanted David of Michelangelo, a symbol of the Renaissance and emblem of the Tuscan city – and Italy in general. The work depicts the Biblical character who found himself facing the tyrannical giant Goliath. Inspired by the aesthetic canons of classical culture, David encapsulates the ideal of male beauty in art and the Renaissance man-hero. The apparently disproportionate size of the right hand and head is a conscious choice for two reasons: first, some parts of the statue necessarily had to be larger in order to be seen from below; secondly, the right hand represents the powerful man, with a strong grip, while the head represents intellect and reason, which elevates human beings from animals.
Michelangelo, Pietà
From Florence we move to the Italian capital, Rome, nicknamed the Eternal City. Here, in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, we are amazed by another Michelangelo masterpiece, the Pietà, which, in addition to being one of the most beautiful works in the history of art, is also the only one that bears the signature of the master (on the shoulder that holds the mantle of the Virgin). Made of white Carrara marble when the artist was in his early twenties, and commissioned by the French cardinal Jean Bilhères, the sculpture was the subject of some criticisms concerning the youthfulness of the depiction of the Virgin.
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However, it seems that this was a conscious choice by Michelangelo: the very young Virgin is the symbol of the Immaculate Conception and infinite purity. Another peculiarity, which can only be noticed by looking at the work from above, is that Christ has an extra tooth, a fifth incisor, to be precise. In Renaissance works, this tooth was nicknamed 'the tooth of sin' and was ascribed to infamous subjects. However, its presence in the case of the Pietà seems to be due to the fact that, with his death, Christ bears all the sins of the world.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne
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Also in Rome, in the Galleria Borghese, we also admire the sculptural pair Apollo and Daphne, created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The work refers to the myth of Apollo and Daphne: Cupid, god of Love, angry with Apollo who had mocked him, shoots two arrows, one destined to make one fall madly in love, the other destined to reject the love received. The first arrow hits Apollo who, seeing Daphne in the woods, begins to chase her in the throes of an overwhelming passion. The nymph, hit by the second arrow, feels an immediate contempt towards Apollo, runs away and invokes the help of the gods, asking to be transformed to escape her suitor. The deities welcome her prayers and turn her into a laurel tree. Bernini's work depicts this myth precisely at the moment of the transformation of the nymph into a tree.
Giuseppe Sanmartino, The Veiled Christ
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For the fourth sculpture we move to Naples. The city of a thousand churches, in addition its excellent cuisine, enjoys an inestimable artistic, historical and cultural wealth. Among these, the Veiled Christ by Giuseppe Sanmartino certainly deserves to be mentioned as a symbol of the Neapolitan city. This marble sculpture immediately had numerous admirers. Among these was Antonio Canova, who declared that he would have gladly given up ten years of his life to be the sculptor of such a masterpiece. The veil that covers the face of Christ is made in such a masterly way that it was said that Raimondo di Sangro, the noble scientist and alchemist who had commissioned the work, taught Giuseppe Sanmartino 'alchemical' marbling, where an actual veil would have been placed on the statue and then calcified in marble crystals. In reality the work was made entirely of marble, but the realism of the veil has perpetrated this myth.
Arnaldo Pomodoro, Grande Sphere
From the Tyrrhenian Sea on which Naples overlooks, we sail with our minds towards the Adriatic Sea, to the picturesque coastal town of Pesaro, where we find the Grand Sphere of Arnaldo Pomodoro (brother of Giò Pomodoro) on the Piazzale della Libertà. The bronze casting, also familiarly known as the 'Pomodoro Ball', is placed on the surface of a fountain facing the sea. It was created by the artist in 1998, based off a polyester model of the Sphere Grande – created for the Montreal Expo in 1967 – which arrived in Pesaro in 1971. The original is now in Rome in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An important feature of this work is its smooth and polished surface, which 'splits' in the centre, revealing an internal mechanism, symbolising the contrast between external perfection and hidden complications, as a metaphor for the complexity of the unknown.
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