A fight to protect the dignity of Michelangelo’s David statue raises questions

Florence's Galleria dell'Accademia fights to protect Michelangelo's David from commercial exploitation, sparking debate on cultural heritage and intellectual property.

Michelangelo’s David has been a towering figure in Italian culture since its completion in 1504. But in the current era of the quick buck, curators worry the marble statue’s religious and political significance is being diminished by the thousands of refrigerator magnets and other souvenirs sold around Florence focusing on David’s genitalia.

The Galleria dell’Accademia’s director, Cecilie Hollberg, has positioned herself as David’s defender since her arrival at the museum in 2015, taking swift aim at those profiteering from his image, often in ways she finds “debasing.”

In that way, she is a bit of a David herself against the Goliath of unfettered capitalism with its army of street vendors and souvenir shop operators hawking aprons of the statue’s nude figure, T-shirts of it engaged in obscene gestures, and ubiquitous figurines, often in Pop Art neon.

At Ms. Hollberg’s behest, the state’s attorney office in Florence has launched a series of court cases invoking Italy’s landmark cultural heritage code, which protects artistic treasures from disparaging and unauthorised commercial use. The Accademia has won hundreds of thousands of euros (dollars) in damages since 2017, Ms. Hollberg said.

“There was great joy across the world for this truly unique victory that we managed to achieve,” she said.

Legal action has followed to protect masterpieces at other museums, not without debate, including Leonardo’s “Vitruvian Man,” Donatello’s David and Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.”

The decisions challenge a widely held practice that intellectual property rights are protected for a specified period before entering the public domain — the artist’s lifetime plus 70 years, according to the Berne Convention signed by more than 180 countries.