3David Has Been Censored

In 1857, Queen Victoria was given a nude replica of David by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. However, she was so shocked by the nudity of the statue that she ordered the attachment of a plaster fig leaf to cover its exposed genitals before being placed in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

As the same technique has been used to cover Adam and Eve’s genitals in numerous depictions of the pair, the leaf is said to symbolize the transition from Greco-Roman ‘heroic’ nudity to Christian censorship.

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