The Sunday Read: 'David's Ankles'

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2020

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“We are conditioned to believe that art is safe,” Sam Anderson, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, explained in this week’s The Sunday Read. “Destruction happens in a number of ways, for any number of reasons, at any number of speeds — and it will happen, and no amount of reverence will stop it.” Today, Sam explores his personal relationship with Michelangelo's David and the imperfections that could bring down the world’s most “perfect” statue. This story was written by Sam Anderson and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

Transcript

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0:26.0	I'm Sam Anderson.
0:31.0	I'm a staff writer for The New York Times magazine.
0:34.0	And in 2016, I wrote a story about the most famous statue in the world, Michelangelo's
0:41.0	David, and how his ankles are full of little micro cracks that actually are so serious
0:49.3	they threaten to send him toppling over and smashing on the floor.
0:58.4	This piece had been brewing for years and years and years.
1:02.7	Ever since I had spent a little time in Florence, and I just fell in love with the statue of
1:10.7	Michelangelo's David, which is ridiculous to say.
1:13.1	It's like trying to tell people that the Mona Lisa is a cool painting or something.
1:16.8	It's the most famous statue in the whole history of the world.
1:20.0	Everybody knows it.
1:21.0	Everybody has seen a billion images of this thing, but when I saw it in person, I had this
1:25.6	almost like religious experience where I was just blown away by, I don't know, like the
1:31.7	potential of human beings for greatness.
1:38.1	2016, the year kind of snowballed in intensity, I guess, into this political situation that
	...

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