In 1854, a plaster cast of Michelangelo’s David, made by Clemente Papi, was placed under the Loggia dei Lanzi, following architect Pasquale Poccianti’s proposal to protect the original from atmospheric agents.
This contribution proposes a close reading of Poccianti’s drawing and Papi’s cast as representational devices that make visible, for the first time in concrete form, the future absence of the David from the arengario of Palazzo Vecchio. Through the analysis of the drawing – what it shows, what it excludes, and how it organises the viewer’s gaze – and of the function of the cast as a temporary double, physically present in one place and symbolically absent from another, the study proposes an interpretative category: absence as an object that can be anticipated and represented.
This category has broader conceptual relevance for reflecting on the relationship between image, project and the loss of meaning within urban space, or the transformation of its perception. In this sense, Poccianti’s project, which represents the cast made by the sculptor Clemente Papi placed beneath the Loggia, can be read as a device for anticipating absence.