London’s Victoria and Albert Museum displays next to its reproduction of Michelangelo’s famous nude, David, a detachable plaster fig leaf. The leaf was created not during Michelangelo’s time but centuries later, for the benefit of Queen Victoria. Before royal visits, museum staff would hook it to the statue to spare Her Imperial Majesty the sight of David’s southerly appendages.
In Dade County, our local agriculture does not stretch to figs, the leaves of which, in any case, have never been deployed here as couture. Rather, our naked Davids wear flippy little skirts furnished by the county magistrate judge.
But is this the first you have heard of Dade County’s naked Davids? Then we had better start with the, ahem, bare facts.
The concerned parties, Magistrate Joel McCormick and Lee and Liz Riddle, co-owners of a fruit stand and garden center in Trenton, all agree:
• That the Riddles some weeks ago displayed in front of The Lily Pad on Highway 11 North two reproductions of Michelangelo’s David, along with various and sundry garden gnomes, frogs, Venuses and St. Francises, which they had bought as a lot at a sale;
• That Judge McCormick called Lee Riddle subsequently and reported he had received complaints about the naked Davids and that “something needed to be done”;
• That McCormick forthwith traveled to The Lily Pad in Lee Riddle’s absence and placed upon the Davids little girls’ skirts, one in a multicolored check pattern and the other in a muted floral print;
• And that the Davids have stood coyly covered ever since, demonstrating to locals and to the influx of tourists brought by the May 14-17 Antique Alley event the tenor of local sensibilities, which is – Well, what? That is my question. I am Robin Ford Wallace and I was invited by the Trenton Arts Council to look into the case of the Naked Davids, because of my background as an investigative reporter.
I should make it clear I am no artist but a plain journalist. My understanding of art is that it is something that transcends its medium, or if I may say in this case, something more than the sum of its, er, parts. My understanding of David – well. I must tell you about that.
Incredibly, I have prior experience of naked Dade Davids: Years ago, I checked out from the Dade County Library Faye Weldon’s novel Life Force, the cover of which featured a male nude statue, but only navel downward. I was amused that the library staff had placed across a certain focal dangling anatomical feature a piece of tape proclaiming NEW BOOK 7 DAY LOAN, and I showed this to my husband.
My husband, who is an artist, immediately identified the statue as Michelangelo’s David. I was impressed. “How did you know?” I said. “It’s only the bottom half.”
He pointed to another dangling anatomical feature (on which I confess I had not focused) and explained that David’s was the most famous hand in Western civilization; that Michelangelo had intentionally made it over-large because it was the hand that slew the giant Saul, but that he had otherwise carved it so realistically that David’s veins were visible beneath his boyish marble flesh; and that it was widely hailed as a miracle of art.
As for the lawn-ornaments at the Lily Pad? Well, not so much. They are in fact barely recognizable as David, though Lee Riddle ID’d the giant slayer right away. “I said it’s King David and you can’t complain about King David; he danced naked in the Bible in front of the whole crowd,” Riddle said he told Judge McCormick. “I said, yeah, they’re naked, they’re supposed to be. That’s Greek art, Joel.”
To pick nits, Michelangelo was no Greek but an Italian Renaissance sculptor depicting a Biblical motif. Riddle’s slip is understandable, though, given the tendency of classical Greek art toward rampant nekkidity. To go by their sculpture, the ancient Greeks did everything greased up and without a stitch on and that includes floor wrestling. One wonders what the Queen would have made of that.
But we are not concerned with Her Majesty here so much as with our local sensibilities, which are – Again, what? We should make it clear here that all parties also agree no one coerced the Riddles into skirting their Davids.
“There’s a lot of people have commented that it’s a shame that this county made us cover them up,” said Liz Riddle. “This county did not make us cover them up. This is just something fun.”
McCormick made much the same statement. “It was all a joke,” he said. “Nobody complained.”
He said he put thrift-store skirts on the Davids simply to tease his friend Lee. Liz Riddle said that she colluded with McCormick in the joke and that now others had joined in. She said one person was making the Davids little tutus, and: “Actually, I was going to put a hat and sunglasses on them.”
The Riddles hope the naked-David attention will bring customers to their shop, which sells in addition to lawn ornaments local produce in season and Amish farm products.
I hope so, too, but I cringe a little when I think of how Dade’s artists are going to react to the tutus, and when I think of tourists driving through seeing them, I feel the way I did as a kid when my father would invite one of my little friends to pull his finger.
Anyway! I’ve had two encounters now with naked Davids in Dade County and another thing I hope is that if there’s a third it will involve neither tape nor tutus, only unadulterated Michelangelo and admiring shouts of OMG, LOOK AT THAT …
…HAND!
Writer Robin Ford Wallace lives in Deerhead Cove, causing as much trouble as she knows how.