He’s not alone. Last month, the principal of a Christian charter school in Florida was forced to resign after sixth-graders – 11-12-year-olds – were shown pictures of Michelangelo’s marble statue of the biblical figure and his ‘The Creation of Adam’ fresco painting that adorns the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, along with Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’. Some parents complained that their children had been exposed to – wait for this – pornography. Some people believe that not informing the parents beforehand was the prime reason for such an outburst.
The discomfort regarding David’s full-frontal nudity is not new. In a 1990 episode of Matt Groening’s animated comedy sitcom The Simpsons, Marge Simpson’s two chain-smoking sisters show her a newspaper with the statue of David on its front page and wants her to lead a protest against this ‘abomination’. Marge exclaims that David is a masterpiece. ‘It’s filth! It graphically portrays parts of the human body which, practical as they may be, are evil,’ replies one of the DeSantisian sisters.
Michelangelo’s David is a muscular, naked man, alone and defiant, and a controversial figure from the time Michelangelo created him between 1501 and 1504. Even Leonardo da Vinci apparently suggested a loincloth. When the statue was first set up in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, a garland of 28 copper leaves was wrapped around David’s waist.
When the grand duke of Tuscany gifted Britain’s queen Victoria a replica of the statue in 1857, she was said to have been horrified. Literally, Victorian morality was at play. To protect David’s modesty before it was put on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, a large detachable fig leaf was promptly sculpted.
State-run China Central TV blurred the statue’s genitals in 2012, while the majority of visitors to Dubai’s Expo 2020 could only see David’s head. In 2016, a Russian woman lost her head upon seeing a 16-ft plastic replica of David at an exhibition. ‘How could you put this bloke without any trousers on in the centre of St Petersburg, next to a school and a church?’ The organisers subsequently planned a ‘Dress David’ vote to determine what, if anything, the statue should wear.
In Jerusalem, citizens initially rejected the offer of a David replica in 1995, the year before the commemoration of the 3,000th anniversary of David’s conquest of the holy city. Was the city council concerned that the naked shepherd boy-turned-king would offend Jewish ultra-orthodox and Arab communities? A diffident, dressed-up David by Andrea del Verrocchio, a Florentine contemporary of Michelangelo, was eventually accepted by the city after some haggling.Ousted Florida school principal Hope Carrasquilla noted that ‘every once in a while, you get a parent who gets upset about Renaissance art‘. Yet, the eternal debate on the ever-changing line between art and pornography was reignited.
According to Cecilie Hollberg, director of Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia, where Michelangelo’s David is housed, ‘To think that David could be pornographic means truly not understanding the contents of the Bible, not understanding Western culture and not understanding Renaissance art.’ Italy, like elsewhere in Europe, is awash in magnificent sculptures, charming fountains, and paintings, not just in its museums but also throughout its towns, squares, and streets, some of which feature figures without a stitch. Would be a tough call for those who want their art un-nuded to pass through these surroundings.
Who knows, tomorrow, some parents may find Mona Lisa’s mystical smile to be a lewd come-hither unfit for family viewing. And you thought that the Taliban alone were philistine and prudes.