We started one of the mornings by visiting the leather and gold factory in the center of Florence. It was the typical (or at least from my memory of this) demonstration and sales talk, but mostly what I was really interested in was getting my hands on goldleaf, which I’d always wanted to use in my crafts projects.

Display of tools used—these look rather surgical, don’t they?

Goldleaf application demonstration (that’s a leather wastepaper box)

More tools

Sample of a typical workstation

Gold + papercrafts too

After the factory visit, we headed over to the Academy of Art to see the famed stark-naked David.

Technically, photos aren’t allowed, but following the tried-and-true technique of coughing-as-you-click and blindly pointing the camera towards what you’re intending to shoot, we did score pretty decent shots.

A bunch of school-teens were there too, so the camera clicks weren’t too much of a distraction/ alarm. This David is the “real” one, the real one of the copy found in one of the outdoor piazzas by the Palazzo della Signora in Florence.

An interesting thing about Michelangelo’s sculptures is that he doesn’t really think of what he’s sculpting, but rather said he “saw” the subject within the marble, and he was merely freeing them from it.

Funnily enough, David, one of his most famed pieces, was carved from the weakest, least desirable type of marble. When he saw the marble block, he saw David within and it didn’t matter that the marble was not the strongest.

This “real” David used to be outside in the piazza, but due to potential damage from constant bird droppings as well as vandals, it was moved inside the Accademia. Unfortunately, vandals have still gotten a piece of him (literally)—a few years back some of them came in and hacked at his foot, taking out some chunks. Since then security has been much tighter, and a glass enclosure was built around him. You can still see the deformation/missing bits from his leg.

It doesn’t look like it here in the photos or in other photos of David, but the sculpture is actually really ginormous, not life-sized at all. It’s freakin’ 17 feet tall. And even from behind the glass, the details are really vivid—you see all the veins and wrinkled brows and ripply muscles and everything. I’m pretty sure Goliath didn’t stand a chance.

Nice butt, David.

Photos: Canon 450D + 10-22mm, Sony W380