Replicas of Michelangelo's David

Replicas of Michelangelo's David have been made numerous times, in plaster, imitation marble, fibreglass, snow, and other materials.[1] There are many full-sized replicas of the statue around the world, perhaps the most prominent being the one in the original's position in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy, placed there in 1910. The original sculpture was moved indoors in 1873 to the Accademia Gallery in Florence, where it attracts many visitors. Others were made for study at art academies in the late nineteenth century and later, while the statue has also been replicated for various commercial reasons or as artistic statements in their own right. Smaller replicas are often considered kitsch.[2]

Replica of David in the sculpture's original position, in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, Florence

Europe

• The bronze cast of David in Piazzale Michelangelo, Florence, is flanked by casts of the reclining figures in the Medici Chapel.
• A plaster cast copy in the Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London was intended for the education of art students, and had a detachable fig leaf, used for added modesty during visits by Queen Victoria and other important ladies, when it was hung on the figure using two strategically placed hooks.[3]
• There is a cast in Park Den Brandt in Antwerp.
• Pushkin Museum in Moscow
• A bronze cast stands in front of the Kongelige Afstøbningssamling, the Danish Royal Cast Collection at the Langelinie Promenade in Copenhagen, though it could not be placed more prominently due to misspelling the artist as "Michael Angelo" in the plaque.
• In 2007, Märklin produced a Z scale (1:220) bronze replica of the statue, which stood approximately 1.6 inches (41 mm) tall. The statue accompanied the "museumswagen" for that year, a collector car offered in the Märklin museum in Göppingen to celebrate the German foundry Strassacker.
• In 2016, Nadey Hakim produced a bronze bust of the statue. The replica is permanently exhibited at the Monterchi Museum, Italy. The museum is the home of the renowned Madonna del Parto which is Piero della Francesca's most famous piece.[4]
• In 2018, the technology brand Samsung reimagined Michelangelo's David as a domestic god standing on top of a washing machine as part of an advertising campaign which toured the parks and plazas of London.

• 
  Piazzale Michelangelo, Florence
• 
  Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• 
  Langelinie Promenade, Copenhagen
• 
  Avenue du Prado, Marseille
• 
  Hans-Peter Feldmann, David (2006) in Cologne - since 2010 in Duisburg

North America

Bronze casting in Buffalo, New York

• A copy of David was presented to the city of Buffalo, New York, and the Buffalo Historical Society by Andrew Langdon, a businessman and scholar. Langdon had seen the statue on exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900; negotiating with the Neapolitan firm of bronze founders who had cast it (Angelus and Sons), he bought it and exacted an agreement that they would not send another to the United States. The statue now stands in Delaware Park.[5]
• A bronze copy can be found in the Plaza Río de Janeiro of Mexico City's Colonia Roma. It has become a symbol of the neighborhood.
• A scale replica can be found at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. It is in the school's older building which primarily functions as a museum, but has several casts for the students’ use.
• Also intended for students was the cast in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
• A bronze replica stands in the courtyard of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.
• There is a full-scale replica of David on the campus of California State University, Fullerton that lies broken in pieces on the ground. It was brought to campus by a professor in 1988 after it was damaged in the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake. Visitors often touch the remains of the sculpture for tactile study or, in a new student tradition, the dislocated but upturned buttocks for general good luck.[6]
• A replica of David can also be found at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. It replaces an earlier, fig-leafed version which was toppled by an earthquake in 1971.[7]

Reduced-scale copies of David in Los Angeles, decorated for Christmas 2005

• Also in southern California, a resident of the Hancock Park neighbourhood in Los Angeles has decorated his house and grounds with twenty-three reduced scale replicas of the statue, all retaining different facial expressions.[8]
• A replica may be found at the "Appian Way Shops" at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada.[9]
• A bronze replica is in Fawick Park in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.[10]
• In 1965, David Sollazzini and Sons of Florence, Italy created a Carrara marble replica for the Palace of Living Art at the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California. The marble used for this replica was taken from Michelangelo's own quarry near Pietrasanta. This replica was later sold to Ripley Entertainment for the Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum in St. Augustine, Florida.
• In 1966, Mike Caffee created a plaster statue for the gay leather bar Febe’s on Folsom Street in San Francisco; the statue was a recreation of Michelangelo’s David as a leather biker icon. This statue became popular and was copied in other plaster and even bronze statues at bars around America. Caffee’s original statue was sent to the GLBT Historical Society Museum.[11]
• In 2004, as part of Stanford University's "Digital Michelangelo Project", a highly accurate 15 inch replica was made by Gentle Giant Studios mechanically reproducing their digital scans of the original. Ignoring the advice of an Italian sculptor to soften the features of a reduced-scale copy "otherwise, it appears precious and cartoony", the results were felt to be satisfactory, if "angular when viewed in person, especially around his face."[12]
• David (inspired by Michelangelo), by Turkish conceptual artist Serkan Özkaya, is a gold-painted foam reproduction of the statue, twice the size of the original, originally created for the 9th International Istanbul Biennial in 2005, accidentally destroyed during installation, recreated, and now in the collection of the 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. (Another copy is located in Eskişehir, Turkey).[13][14][15]
• On February 26, 2013 a Lawrence, Kansas man with no formal training in sculpture molded a giant block of snow into a temporary inspiration of Michelangelo's David, at roughly 7/17 scale. The four-hour endeavor was a response of one-upsmanship to his sister's snow version of the Star Wars character Yoda, dubbed Snowda, a picture of which was uploaded to George Takei's Facebook Page and received tens of thousands of "likes."

South America

A marble replica at the Instituto Ricardo Brennand in Recife, Brazil

• A bronze replica stands on the esplanade of Palacio Municipal in Montevideo, Uruguay.
• A marble replica of David is located in the gardens of the Instituto Ricardo Brennand, Recife, Brazil. It was made by Cervietti Franco & Company, again of Pietrasanta.
• A marble replica of David is located in cable car hill Otto 's gallery of art, Bariloche, Rio Negro, Argentina.
• A replica of David is located in front of the Worker's Recreational Center, a park on the east side of São Paulo, SP, Brazil.

Asia

• In India, a replica installed at the Administrative Building of the University of Pune is a legacy of the British Raj.
• In 1995, a replica of David was offered as a gift by the municipality of Florence to the municipality of Jerusalem to mark the 3,000th anniversary of David's conquest of the city. The proposed gift evoked a storm in Jerusalem, where religious factions urged the gift be declined, because the naked figure was considered pornographic. Finally, a compromise was reached and another, fully clad replica of a different statue (David by Verrocchio) was donated instead.
• In Korea, Hallym University, a replica of David was installed in front of the library.

Australia

• A 7m tall Carrara marble replica of Michaelangelo's David can be viewed at Emerald Lakes, Queensland in the suburb of Carrara, Queensland.[16]
• A replica of David can be found at the Moreland Hotel, in Brunswick, Victoria.

Notes

1. A. Victor Coonin, From Marble to Flesh: The Biography of Michelangelo’s David, Florence, The Florentine Press, 2014.
2. John Launer, The many faces of David, QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, 2005, Volume 98, Number 10 Pp. 777-778, Oxford University Press
3. "David's Fig Leaf". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 2007-05-29.
4. "The Positive Changes Of History - Nadey Hakim: "The Art's Surgeon"". L'ItaloEuropeo - Independent Magazine in London. 13 August 2016. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
5. Smithsonian
6. Daily Titan
7. see Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death Revisited, p.102, 1998, Vintage Books, ISBN 0679771867
8. Daniel Yi, "House of 'David': When 17 replicas of Michelangelo's famed statue adorn the outside of a home, is it art or excess?," Los Angeles Times, Metro (Nov 17, 1997): 1.
9. Frommer's Portable Las Vegas
10. "Looking Back: Fawick's gift of the Statue of David". Argusleader.com. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
11. Casey Hoke (2017-08-22). "Mike Caffee- Fe-Be's Leather David (1966)". Queer Art History. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
12. Stanford, including comparisons with two small commercial replicas
13. Randy Kennedy, "Black, White and Read All Over Over", The New York Times, December 15, 2006.
14. Göksel Bozkurt, "Davut sculpture goes to Kentucky 21C museum", Hürriyet Daily News, September 19, 2011.
15. "Louisville residents react to giant, gold David statue" Archived 2013-03-10 at the Wayback Machine, WHAS-TV, May 2, 2012.
16. "Check out Michelangelo's David… in Emerald Lakes", Things To Do Sober, Apr 29, 2017.