Italia Icons – Michelangelo

It is perhaps the most famous statue in the world and a preeminent icon of the Renaissance, and of the city that produced the Renaissance… Michelangelo’s David was first commissioned in 1466, though not to the artist who completed it. (He wasn’t even born until 1475). The commission originally went to one Agostino di Duccio, […]

Benito Mussolini

This statuette was commissioned in the mid-1930s to glorify ‘il Duce’. It’s about 18 inches tall, but it carries a story much taller than that… The artist and sculptor Antonio Ligabue (1899-1965) was not what anyone who knew him would have called a ‘people person’. Though obviously talented – albeit in that self-taught way art […]