The artists as known are usually very jealous of their creations, like the famous Michelangelo who was notoriously a particularly touchy type.
We are in 1504 in the workshop where the famous sculptor was about to finish off one of his best known works, the David. For the occasion the highest authorities of the Florentine Republic had gone to observe the great statue, more than four meters high, made to be located, as a symbol of Justice and freedom of the city in front of the world, in piazza della Signoria, in front of Palazzo Vecchio.
Also the gonfaloniere Piero Soderini among them, protector of the arts which, perhaps to show art expert, on that occasion showed Michelangelo his misgivings about the correct proportions of the nose of the statue.
The cunning of the genius
The sculptor, despite the temperamental, consented strangely to reduce the nose but before stepping on the scale to implement your suggestion, to collect hammer and chisel he collected some fragments and marble powder that were on the floor.
Thus began to pretend to lower the nose: a tap there, one there and meanwhile opened slightly the hand by dropping small pieces of marble and dust. Convinced that way present that was chiseling your nose, so much that the gonfaloniere was of modica, exclaiming that the statue with that review had become perfect.
The David, a symbol of the city of Florence, is considered as one of the masterpieces of art history, the universal symbol of the sculpture and the grandeur of Michelangelo, whose creative genius (and the nose of David is an example) needed beauty tips.