In March, 1987, art historian Frederick Hartt announced the discovery of a small stucco torso which he believed to be Michelangelo's model for his famous "David." Hartt, the eminent Italian Renaissance scholar, recounts the commissioning of the David, Vasari's description of the model and Michelangelo's methods, and the inventorying of the model in the Medici apartments in the Palazzo Vecchio from the early sixteenth century until 1690, when a terrible fire swept the building. He reconstructs the probable chain of events the occurred after the fire, when the model, severely damaged, fell into the rubble and was lost for the next two centuries. This masterpiece of detection and deduction reads like a thriller.
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