As Plain as the Nose
Humble pie is painting from direct observation. — Lennart Anderson In an art class, I’ve been painting a plaster cast of the nose of Michelangelo’s David . Despite the schnozzola’s simplicity, so far it’s taken me 24 hours to paint it—and I still have three more hours to go before it’s done. My instructor demands a degree of exactitude that clearly taxes my ability to observe reality and reproduce it on a two-dimensional surface. Of course, that’s why I’m enrolled in the class. To improve my eye-to-hand skills. But talk about humble pie! The class is like a pie-eating contest. The exercise isn’t only humbling; it’s withering. But I’m in good company. The practice of painting fragments of David’s face goes back to mid-19th century England. An 1860 catalog in Great Britain’s National Art Library shows that the London studio of master mold-maker Domenico Brucciani produced and sold plaster casts “taken from antique and modern statues,” including fragments of David . The ca...