Michelangelo's David at the V and A

I have always had a soft spot for plaster casts, partly in (I confess) an "I told you so" sort of way.

My Faculty in Cambridge has one of the best (and best documented) collections of plaster casts of ancient sculpture in the world, more than 600 of them. About 25 years ago I got interested in them, where they had come from, what kind of debates they had provoked, how they had intersected with bigger debates in the history of (classical) art. And indeed I wrote a little paper on the collection, published in 1994, in what was then the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society.

I have to say back then, many of my colleagues thought this was a strange, antiquarian and embarrassingly local interest. And I suspect that it was only by the skin of its teeth that the article got accepted.

But (and this is the self satisfied bit) since those days the kind of issues I raised -- about plaster casts as a key site of debate about valuation of original vs copy, or about authenticity etc -- have become much more mainstream, and probably (I admit) have been discussed much more acutely than I managed. All the same, I still feel a strong affection for these strange masterpieces of the copiest's art.

And so it is with quite a bit of excitement that I am going to the V and A on Tuesday to the opening celebration for their renovated Italian Cast Court, to "say a few words". Star of the show, though, will be Michaelangelo's David (above).

The V and A cast courts are (as you would expect I guess) about 10 years older than the Cambridge collection, and not wholly, or even mainly, classical (though the Trajan's Column cast -- not in the Italian Court -- was always a highlight). And their original purpose was never as rigidly academic as what we have. Our's was originally meant for students studying classical sculpture in the days before there were good pictures (and although we use them now for a much wider range of public engagement purposes, that is still clearly the collections founding function). The V and A (or the South Kensingtom Museum as then known) had a much wider mission.

Part of the point was to show the masterpieces of world art to "the working class order" (in that nineteenth-century phrase), but in as spectacular and impressive way as possible. The point was not that they were just "copies", it was that they were as "real" as you could get. And they were displayed in a vast, palatial architectural setting that was as impressive as you could imagine. The fact that Michelangelo's David was plaster not marble isn't what was at stake. This was, if you like, about replication as the essence of impact and originality.

I am really looking forward to seeing this revived display, in all its glory -- including (yippee) the uncovered and restored ceramic floor, previously buried under the lino. And I am wondering if David will have his specially fitted nineteenth-century fig leaf. What's the betting?