“As a cardiologist, when I saw that, it was very dramatic to me. It really stuck out.”
INDIANAPOLIS – While art historians have studied Michelangelo’s"David" for centuries, it took the eye of a Marian University cardiologist to see somethingDr. Daniel Gelfman himself had never recognized this feature in photos he saw of the"David," but when he viewed the artwork in person during a visit to Florence, Italy, in 2018, he noticed a bulging vein on the right side of the biblical hero’s neck.
Although a similar condition to the one"David" displays can occur intermittently in healthy people – think of a singer belting his or her heart out – the person’s jugular vein in such cases pops out only briefly and then returns to normal. In the case of the"David," his abnormally distended vein was literally set in stone.
When Michelangelo began the"David" in 1501, the then-26-year-old's career was trending upward quickly. Just two years before in Rome, he had finished the heartbreakingly beautiful"Pieta," in which Jesus lays in his mother's lap after his body came down from the cross. At the turn of the century, the Vestry Board of Florence Cathedral and the Wool Guild were seeking an artist to create a giant"David." It now stands in the Accademia Gallery in Florence.
Though the Catholic Church disapproved of dissection, it allowed Michelangelo and others to take apart corpses of criminals and prostitutes. The artist, who was said to have memorized all of the poet Dante as a kid, remembered the intricate muscles and bones of the human body, said William E. Wallace, an expert on Michelangelo and art history professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
Wallace said it is likely that Michelangelo indeed recognized the effects of jugular venous distention and used it purposefully to create tense figures. But of course, scholars can't know his intent for sure.
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