In my quest to understand how to better foster creativity in students, I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum to study some of the most profound art works and artists. These artists include Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael. As a teacher fostering creativity is essential because it helps develop so many vital skills in children. The library can be a place where students can express thoughts and feelings, explore their inner world, develop greater self-awareness, and cope with stress. Additionally, art, artists, and creativity can go beyond just the individual to transform and inform culture.
Michelangelo's sculpture of David is one of the most famous objects in the history of art, and the V&A's cast of David has been a favorite with visitors since its arrival in the Museum in 1857. Donated by Queen Victoria, this cast has a fascinating history and continues to inspire artists, designers and film-makers today.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564) was in his early twenties when he was commissioned to create a statue representing the biblical hero of David. He was offered a colossal block of marble which had been previously worked by two other artists, Agostino di Duccio (in 1464) and Antonio Rossellino (in 1475). Both artists had abandoned their work after noticing imperfections in the marble's grain, but despite these flaws, Michelangelo took up the monumental challenge of carving the figure.
How the mold was made!
In 1847, to determine a suitable place to move the marble original, The Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II commissioned Clemente Papi, the royal bronze founder and cast maker, to produce an exact replica in bronze that could be used to test a suitable location. However, in the end the sculpture was reproduced in plaster.
To cast the figure, Papi had to first create a mould. A piece-mould has an inner and outer layer, with the inner made up of several small mould pieces which are then held together and supported by the outer 'mother mould'. The complexity of David'sform required Papi to individually shape over 1500 mould pieces, which together all fitted inside the mother mould like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
Papi was aware of how precarious the casting process was, which explains why only one complete mould has ever been produced from the surface of Michelangelo's original David.
The photo’s below are from the V&A‘s Raphael Cartoons and the Sistine Chapel exhibition.
The Raphael Cartoons are considered one of the greatest treasures of the Renaissance in the UK. These huge, full-scale designs for tapestries were created by Raphael – one of the most important masters of the Renaissance period. Commissioned by Pope Leo X, shortly after his election in 1513, for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Palace, the Cartoons depict key episodes of the lives of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
