David

Michelangelo's David

I've already warbled on about how much sculpture is my favorite art medium; the solidity of stone, the chiseling of a lump of alabaster, marble, wood, into whatever obstinate vision resides in an artist's head.
This is the ultimate homage to the classic virility of the male form, young naked David, destined king, defeater of tyranny against the most unlikely odds (and later, famous prophet of the ninety nine wives who still coveted his subject's one wife enough to demand he divorce her). Much has been made of the female form and its beauty, like that of the headless Venus sculpture with the breast exposed, but there is something humbling and heart wrenching and ultimately captivating about the absolute perfection of David. In real life, the sculpture is so much larger than one would expect, it towers above the gathered crowds in the sunfilled atrium of the Accademia in Florence.

I want to tell you that you are my David, I am in awe of how beautiful you are, how painfully masculine I find you, and how unfair it is that just because I am a woman I have to pretend that I am blind, and that it doesn't matter that language leaves me in your presence, or that I get tongue tied and clumsy, and my heart doesn't break a little every time you turn away.

"Cat Among the Pigeons"