The author's description of first encountering the statue is carelessly grandiose. Do people actually have these kinds of reactions to things that are so static and overt? In order to find nuance in something like that, you either need to have extensive background context and deep insight into the mind of the artist or else your pontifications at some point say more about you than the art. Once that happens, you run the risk of sounding some combination of pretentious and disingenuous.
I'm not artistic at all nor do I understand artistic nuance.
I can say there was something striking about going into that museum in Florence, seeing other massive blocks of started-on marble in the corridor, and finally arriving at David.
No, I didn't get the nuance then nor do I get it now, but I remember the awestruck feeling I got seeing the statue for the first time.
Don't want to deprecate your personal feeling, but maybe there are rather profane factors that can add to a struck of awe. I imagine that when you come into a big bright hall with that thing right in the middle, which is far bigger than expected and which you have seen a hundred times before on photos, it's hard not to get an awestruck feeling, no matter what kind of thing there actually is.
Oh well, it's a bit hard to discuss art if you have not the slightest sense of it like me.
Awestruck is one thing, but I think you need to actually read the author's recounting of his own experience (which from sounds of it is furthermore many years in retrospective) to understand why I'm calling him out on it.
There's a reason that so much Enlightenment-era philosophy is devoted to trying to understand aesthetics/artistic genius, and it's that the human response to art can be truly profound. His description is no more hyperbolic than thousands of others, and the fact that you haven't experienced these reactions doesn't have any bearing on how others experience art.
My anecdata is that it was a very powerful experience for me. For me it was less about the size of David and more about the details. You can see the veins in his forearms. Depending on the angle of viewing the expression on his face seems to change significantly.
Europe is also full of Italian Super-managers working in other countries. Actually, I wished there were more highly skilled people coming to work in Italy (currently there are many more highly skilled Italians going abroad).
Well, just after I read this, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake hits very close to Florence.
Fortunately, David survived.
"Amatrice, Accumoli and Arquata del Tronto. Three towns north of Rome reduced to rubble by an earthquake today. People dead. Lives ruined" (https://oilandmarble.com/2016/08/25/earthquake-in-italy-why-...)
