Si trouve, envoyez-le au Louvre, poste paye

[ThunderPeel2001]

Hello all, I'm currently travelling around Europe after losing my job and I was just in Paris. I went the Louvre (amazing) and while I was there it suddenly struck me that I might be able to find the original statue from Maniac Mansion/Last Crusade. I've always been convinced that it was an 8-bit representation of a real statue... but after Googling for information on it while I was in there, it doesn't appear to have been the case.

 

Can anyone set me right? Is it based on a real statue, or was it a Lucas Games invention? (Last Crusade features two Manets and a (paint by numbers) Mona Lisa, so it seemed plausible that the statue seen in MM/LC was a real one...)

 

Greetings and many thanks from Florence!

 

 

[Thrik]

There should at least be some nice Broken Sword stuff to track down?!

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yeah, I was going to boot up BS and remind myself of some of the locations… but I didn’t get around to it. 
 

(Don’t get me wrong, Paris was amazing either way! I loved it.)

[Serge]

Pretty sure it's a "made up" sculpture. Douglas Crockford famously wrote that while making the NES version, they claimed to Nintendo that it was a Michelangelo. Michelangelo only made a couple of female nudes, and they got lucky, and one of them (Dawn) looks somewhat like it. If you squint your eyes and turn your head 30 degrees. And you're partially blind. According to Crockford, it was Winnick who looked through an art book to find the Michelangelo "reference". Surely Winnick would have known if it was originally based on a closer reference. 🙂

 

(It was still removed from the NES version).

Edited August 13, 2023 by Serge

[ATMcashpoint]

If you're still in Florence, you can actually see Michelangelo's Dawn for yourself, since it's in the Medici Chapel there. For my money it's not Michelangelo's finest work by a long shot - his knowledge of female anatomy was evidently much less detailed (and probably less personal) than his familiarity with the intricacies of the male body.

[ThunderPeel2001]

On 8/14/2023 at 6:46 AM, ATMcashpoint said:

If you're still in Florence, you can actually see Michelangelo's Dawn for yourself, since it's in the Medici Chapel there. For my money it's not Michelangelo's finest work by a long shot - his knowledge of female anatomy was evidently much less detailed (and probably less personal) than his familiarity with the intricacies of the male body.

I did indeed see both those sculptures (Dawn/Dusk) at the Medici chapel! I enjoyed them, but I know what you mean. (Freaking David was AMAZING.)

Edited August 18, 2023 by ThunderPeel2001