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Italians plan a bath for David

FLORENCE, Italy, July 24 (UPI) -- Despite international objections, Italian authorities want to give Michelangelo's sculpture David a bath with distilled water.

A heated debate has grown over whether to use water or a dry cleaning process to remove the worst grime from the masterpiece, the BBC reported.

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Critics said using water on the Florence statue would not only make it uniform and hide its colors but would destroy the effects nearly 500 years had created on it.

The argument over how, or even whether, to clean the statue has taken 11 years. Work is due to start in September and finish in time for the sculpture's 500th anniversary next year.

"If it is just a case of a simple cleaning which does not go beyond removing dirt, there is no problem," said Enzo Settesoldi, an Italian expert told the newspaper La Stampa on Wednesday. "But once you begin using compresses impregnated with foreign substances, the basic material can change."

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