David: Baywatch brawn

Florence, Sept. 6 (Reuters): Most women would agree he has a very nice rear end. Tall and handsome, he has the kind of Baywatch muscles that would make many of both sexes drool.

One small detail: he is about to celebrate his 500th birthday. He is Michelangelo’s statue of David.

“I knew he was old but I wasn’t aware he was turning 500,” said Pat Fisico, a Canadian on holiday in Florence today. “I don’t think he looks a day over 22 ... I hope he will be around for another 5,000 years.”

So do Florentine officials who are preparing to fete the birthday boy in his birthday suit. On Wednesday, 500 years to the day that the icon of Renaissance male beauty was unveiled for the people of Florence, his modern-day co-citizens are kicking off a year of events to celebrate David in style.

There will be concerts, fireworks, symposiums and exhibitions. There is, of course, an official David 500 T-shirt.

But most of all, arts officials want the half-millennium of one of the world’s most famous nude statues to get people looking forward and not only backwards.

“Florence is seen as a Disneyland of the Renaissance,” said Antonio Paolucci, superintendent of city museums.

“We want David’s 500th birthday to spark debate, to be controversial, to challenge people about what art is today, not just what it was 500 years ago,” he said on Monday at a conference presenting the birthday events at the Accademia museum where David has been displayed since 1873.

To chisel home the connection between old art and new art, the wing that houses David will be cleared of Renaissance paintings. They will be replaced by contemporary works inspired by the statue of the muscular shepherd boy who slew Goliath.

Five artists — George Baselitz, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis and Robert Morris — will show their works in the shadow of the statue Florentines call “Il Gigante” (the giant).

A 26-year old Michelangelo sculpted David, who is more than four metres high, between 1502-04, from a single piece of poor quality marble other sculptors had rejected.