Fighting over David

A long-running project to restore Michelangelo's 500-year-old statue of David, widely regarded as the embodiment of male perfection, has been halted by a furious row between the two women in charge of cleaning it.

After six months painstakingly preparing one of the world's greatest masterpieces for its first thorough cleaning in more than a century, Agnese Parronchi, Italy's foremost restorer of Michelangelo's sculptures, walked out last week in a disagreement with her boss over the best method to use.

She accused Franca Falletti, who runs Florence's Accademia gallery, where the statue is kept, of trying to dictate use of a "dangerous" cleaning technique which would endanger the 16ft-high marble statue.

Ms Parronchi, who previously oversaw restoration of Michelangelo carvings in the Medici Chapel, said she had wanted to restrict cleaning to the delicate but slow "dry" method. This uses a combination of tiny badger-hair brushes, cotton buds, rubber erasers and chamois cloths to tease out grime from the surface of the work.

However, she complained, her "superiors" - a committee of experts led by Ms Falletti - were trying to force her to use a "wet" technique employing distilled water.

The very public dispute has pitted the down-to-earth Ms Parronchi, 46, a bespectacled native Florentine, against the elegant Ms Falletti, 10 years her senior but an enthusiast for more modern techniques. It has also made public the jealousies and personal rivalries that are rife in the city renowned as one of Europe's greatest cultural gems. . .

The sculpture, which stood outdoors for almost 400 years, was last cleaned late in the 19th century using a mild solution of acid, which modern restorers fear damaged the protective oil coating applied by Michelangelo himself. Since then it has been kept indoors, but its surface has continued to gather grime.

Ms Parronchi had just completed a detailed survey of the statue's surface, and was about to begin careful, inch by inch cleaning over the sculpture, using "wet packs" only on particularly stubborn patches of dirt.

She said the method favoured by Ms Falletti - whom she dismissed as "just an art historian, not a restorer" - would uniformly strip David both of its dirt, and of its remaining protective patina.

Posted by David on April 21, 2003 2:42 PM