FLORENCE, Italy — For 500 years, Michelangelo’s “David” has stood as a symbol of Florentine independence and virtue.
So when a report commissioned by the federal government emerged this month claiming that Italy — and not the city — was the statue’s rightful owner, local tempers flared. The sculpture, Mayor Matteo Renzi retorted, had always, and would always, “belong to Florence.”
“The ‘David’ is not an umbrella,” to be haggled over, he said. “It’s a monument in which the city of Florence still sees its identity.”
Civic pride aside, the dispute over “David” has also brought to light a question increasingly raised by many local governments: Who should benefit from Italy’s cultural patrimony?
In 2009, more than one million people saw “David,” which is housed in the Accademia Gallery, the country’s fourth most visited cultural site. Tickets sales topped $7 million. The proceeds went into the federal Culture Ministry coffers.Continue reading the main story
The ownership issue — and related requests to have a stake in profits from “David” — dates from previous administrations. But the turning point came earlier this year when the Culture Ministry commissioned a pair of lawyers to peruse existing documents and determine the rightful owner.
In a nine-page document written in dense legalese, the lawyers concluded that “David” belongs to the nation, the true legal successor of the Florentine Republic, which commissioned the statue in 1501.
Completed by 1504, it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece (Giorgio Vasari, the 16th century Italian painter and architect, wrote that “whoever has seen this work need not trouble to see any other work executed in sculpture, either in our own or in other times”) and placed in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, then — as now — the civic heart of the city.
It remained there until 1873, when it was transported to the Accademia, which belonged to the newly created Kingdom of Italy, the predecessor to modern Italy. (A copy of the statue was placed in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, also known as Palazzo Vecchio, at the beginning of the 20th century.)
A base was constructed for the massive work, and in 1877 the city lent the national government money to complete the structure. At the time, the city could have advanced its ownership rights but did not, the lawyers wrote in the report. Therefore, they said, the city has no grounds for a claim.
But the mayor has his own documents up his sleeve. For one, Florence had been the capital of Kingdom of Italy from 1865 to 1870, and “David,” he said, was part of a package deal that the kingdom gave the city after transferring the capital to Rome. Proof of ownership, he said, is in a June 9, 1871, document that authorizes the transfer to the city of several buildings, including the Palazzo Vecchio.
The lawyer’s report says that there is no specific mention of “David” in such documents, “even though by this time it had assumed enormous, even symbolic, value.”
In an odd twist, Italian news outlets also reported that Simone Caffaz, the president of the Fine Arts Academy of Carrara, where the marble used for “David” was quarried, believed that Carrara had the right to make its own claims on Michelangelo’s work.
“If the state and the city actually ever bring this issue to court, it will be terrible publicity for Florence,” fretted Gabriele Toccafondi, a member of Parliament and the local leader of the center-right People of Freedom Party. “People will see this as a sort of commedia all’Italiana.”
Mr. Renzi, the mayor, insists that his claim for “David” does not have the bottom line as its bottom line. Still, eight million tourists a year do have an impact on the city, he said in an interview in his office in the Palazzo Vecchio. Countless tourists “come into the city each day, and we offer them services,” he said. But the millions spent in the city’s museums go straight to the federal government, he added.
“This is a new instance of David versus Goliath,” he said. “Our battle is for a different way of managing the cultural patrimony of a city that lives off culture.”
Officials from the Culture Ministry counter that counting ticket receipts is misleading. Only two government-owned cultural sites in Italy actually make money — the Colosseum and the Milan site of Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” — while the rest are in the red, they said.
What the city fails to mention, moreover, is tourism-related activities and business, said Roberto Cecchi, director general of the Culture Ministry. Citing a recent study the ministry carried out on the Colosseum, Mr. Cecchi said that for every euro the nation earned in ticket sales at the site in 2009, local businesses reaped many times more in sales. “That’s the sector we should be developing,” he said.
In Florence, Mr. Cecchi added, an accord is currently being worked out for a single ticket that would grant access to both city and federal museums. “It’s an integrated model” that could be one step toward greater cooperation, he said.
But for critics like Mr. Renzi, who at 35 is a rising star of the Italian center-left, the Culture Ministry is besieged by an elephantine bureaucracy and an outmoded view of its mandate that effectively resists any attempt at modernization.
“Culture in Italy is in the hands of people who may know everything about Vasari” but are afraid to open up to change, he said. His administration, on the other hand, “wants to view culture as economic development,” offering improved services, like longer opening hours for museums, so that the city can be more competitive for tourist dollars, he said.
Last year, the ministry created a new division — a directorate of museums — to make better use of the commercial potential of its cultural heritage. But resistance has been very vocal, both from within the ministry ranks, as well as from members of the cultural intelligentsia who fear over-commercialization.
On a recent August weekday, dozens of tourists gaped and gawked at “David,” towering in his tribune at the Accademia.
Seeing “David” had definitely been “the highlight of this trip,” said Sorcha O’Keefe, a primary school teacher from Cork, Ireland. But the squabble over “David” made little sense to her. “I can’t see that it would matter who officially owns it, as long as it is there for everyone to enjoy,” she said.Continue reading the main story