[david] makes a comeback, clad in gold

All right, I admit I bottled out on showing those nether regions but if you're desperate to get a gander, here they are.


David's been restored for $255 000 in Firenze:

Museum director Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi said the 15th century statue created by Renaissance artist Donatello was fully restored to its original glory using advanced laser technology ...

That is one question - what to do to restore - but what about the question of embellishing?

[The restoration] included the application of a thin layer of gold to the statue ... intended to add luster to the historic piece ...

This takes it out of the realms of restoration and into someone's modern notion of creativity. And so to another major question - how much money should be devoted to/wasted on restoration of world heritage items?

The "could have been spent on the poor" brigade have a legitimate argument but the opposite argument - that key restoration work preserves the world's treasures, something beyond one day's meal for the city's poor - that is also a powerful point of view.

This view holds that the poor would get value from the work of art anyway - they have little else to do during the day but to appreciate the city's beauty. Unless the work was hidden behind closed doors and was only viewable for an entrance fee.

What percentage of a nation's budget should be devoted to restoration anyway? Difficult to get the percentages for Italy but I found this:

• Article 3 of the Budget Law 662/1996, providing for a portion of the national lottery revenue to be dedicated to the protection and restoration of cultural goods; and

• Article 60 of the Budget Law 289/2002, establishing that 3% of public capital expenditure for "strategic infrastructure" should be assigned to the financing of cultural goods and activities.

It would seem not very much. Plus much cultural funding is expected to come out of national lotteries, which is hardly government allocation of moneys. Then there are the cuts in funding to existing bodies, such as English Heritage.

If one accepts that maintenance and restoration is not a N1 priority, compared to education and social services, then how much, in percentage terms of GNP should be allocated? And how does that compare to the massive wastage at every level, in so many diverse areas the governments administer, for so many years now?