In a visit to the Louvre in Paris you encounter so many wonderful objects that you may become a little jaded. "O, just another work of Michelangelo." Let me help you encounter this object. Forget who did it, take it on face value. It is a sculpture of a man. The man is obviously in pain or just getting up in the morning. What do you see? He forgot his pants like many sculptures of the time.
Now, let me look at it as an artist. The artist had to go out to a quarry to buy the marble. It had to be without a crack or imperfection. It would be expensive. Then, he had to get it to his studio. Setting it up (after making the bottom perfectly flat) he took his tools (not electric in those days) and removed all the stone that did not look like this. Really? It is not making clay into something by added clay piece after piece. It is taking away. It is seeing a figure in stone and liberating it.
This is marvelous and worth at least an hour looking at and studying it.
This is why the Louvre is a multiple day visit and more than Mons Lisa, The Winged Victory and Venus d' Milo.
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