Since the digital transformation of the internet age, more and more previously-unfathomed ways of preserving, replicating, and interacting with historical works of art have been invented and successfully implemented. The rise of digital art has also added permanence to the great sculptures and paintings of the Renaissance and Modernist eras, as techniques to better protect these famous artworks from environmental and atmospheric factors, as well as theft, have been developed using technology.

3D printing is the latest technology to come to the rescue when an Italian museum needed to make the life-sized replica of the 520-year-old Michelangelo’s David sculpture available halfway around the world without moving the real edifice from the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence.

Standing just as tall but weighing 10 times less (at 550 kilograms) of the original, an exact replica of Michelangelo's statue of David created using 3D printers will be making its way to the Dubai Expo 2021 starting in October.

Italy commissioned the copy of the Renaissance masterpiece to represent the country at the expo which was initially scheduled to take place between October 20, 2020, to April 10, 2021, but was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and now scheduled for October 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022.

A team of technicians at Hexagon Italia, under the curatorship of the University of Florence, created the 3D printed copy out of acrylic resin. Under the curatorship of the University of Florence, they produced a high-definition physical copy finished off by master restorers. These craftsmen and restorers applied marble dust for an authentic final effect.

But critics still hold out that despite the technology-aided precision and attention to detail, the 3D printed copy still won’t feel the same don’t have the same impact as the original masterpiece of the Biblical hero David, which was sculpted between 1501 and 1504 from a single block of marble.

"No one can ever do that because no copy could capture the pathos of the original," the head of the Galleria dell'Accademia, Cecilie Hollberg, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper, about measuring the copy with the original. But she said the copy could be "its messenger, its technological, artistic and artisanal alter ego".

About the remarkable feat, Levio Valetti, head of marketing at Hexagon Italia, told AFP that they digitized the statue with optical instruments without ever touching it.

“It's a much more accurate reproduction than those made in the past, including the casts," Valetti remarked.

The copy is due to arrive in Dubai later this month.