Lecture by Dr. Alison Luchs
Michelangelo created the statue now known as David-Apollo around 1530 to please the tyrannical governor of Florence, Baccio Valori. This unfinished work was recently lent by the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence to the National Gallery of Art, where it was on view from December 13, 2012, to March 7, 2013 to open the nationwide celebration 2013?The Year of Italian Culture.
The statue’s double name reflects contradictory evidence—both visual and documentary—concerning its subject. The graceful figure, its surface still veiled in chisel marks, embodies ambiguities and conflicts in Michelangelo’s own life.
This lecture, of which an earlier version was presented on January 27, 2013, at the National Gallery of Art, explores the mysteries surrounding the statue, the significance of its unfinished condition, and responses to it from later artists.
*ABOUT THE COVER IMAGE: Michelangelo’s David-Apollo, circa 1530 – National Museum of the Bargello, Florence
LOCATION
Friendship Heights Village Center
4433 South Park Avenue
Chevy Chase, MD
NO RESERVATION REQUIRED
THIS LECTURE IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
ALISON LUCHS
Alison Luchs is curator of Early European Sculpture at the National Gallery of Art, where she has worked since 1980. At the National Gallery she participated in planning the West Building ground floor sculpture galleries (1999-2002); contributed to catalogues of the sculpture and decorative arts collections; served as co-curator on the exhibition Desiderio da Settignano: Sculptor of Renaissance Florence in 2007, and as curator of An Antiquity of Imagination: Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture in 2009.
A graduate of Vassar College (1970) and the Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D. 1976), she has taught art history at Swarthmore College and Syracuse University, and published articles on Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, stained glass in Italian Renaissance churches, historic sculpture in Prague, French royal garden sculpture, and portrait busts of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Her books include Cestello: A Cistercian Church of the Florentine Renaissance (1977); an English translation of Martin Wackernagel’s World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist (1981); Tullio Lombardo and Ideal Portrait Sculpture in Renaissance Venice, 1490-1530 (1995) and The Mermaids of Venice: Fantastic Sea Creatures in Venetian Renaissance Art (2010). She has also written landmark applications and articles about historic buildings in her native city of Washington DC.
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