Fighting to preserve: A vendor sells souvenirs of Michelangelo’s 16th-century statue of David at a kiosk in Italy.
| Photo Credit: AP
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.
More broadly, the decisions raise the question of whether institutions should be the arbiters of taste, and to what extent freedom of expression is being limited.
“It raises not just legal issues, but also philosophical issues. What does cultural patrimony mean? How much of a stranglehold do you want to give institutions over ideas and images that are in the public domain?’’ said Thomas C. Danziger, an art market lawyer based in New York.
He pointed to Andy Warhol’s famous series inspired by Leonardo’s “Last Supper.” “Are you going to prevent artists like Warhol from creating what is a derivative work?’’ Mr. Danziger asked. “Many people would view this as a land grab by the Italian courts to control and monetise artworks in the public domain that were never intended to be charged for.”
Italy’s cultural code is unusual in its scope, essentially extending in perpetuity the author’s copyright to the museum or institution that owns it. The Vatican has similar legislative protections on its masterpieces, and seeks remedies through its court system for any unauthorised reproduction, including for commercial use and for damaging the dignity of the work, a spokesman said.
Court cases have debated whether Italy’s law violates a 2019 European Union directive stating that any artwork no longer protected by copyright falls into the public domain, meaning that “everybody should be free to make and share copies of that work.”
