Visual Description: The birth of David.
CLUEN = UNCLE, SALOS = LASSO, RPTIEM = PERMIT, FRYRUL = FLURRY — Giving us: UCSSPETLUR
Clue/Question: When Michelangelo was asked if he could create a marble statue, he said – – –
Answer: “SCULPT–SURE“
(Now this is a major groaner of a pun! But, I think it’s great. Not as great as Michelangelo’s David, but still pretty good. Some consider David the world’s finest marble sculpture. It is definitely a masterpiece.
None of today’s clue words came up as new. Two of the jumbles were new, but we’ve seen “cluen” and “fryrul” some time in the past. The answer letter layout was a splendid ten letter jumble. Nothing obvious about it.
Great cartoon of early 16th Century Florence. Two other sculptors attempted to carve the huge block of marble, but gave up. After the success of his Piéta, the young Michelangelo was able to convince the church that he was the man for the job. He did not disappoint. Be well and do good, friends.) — YUR
Images courtesy of Google
Unclerave's Wordy Weblog 
I saw this answer pretty quickly, but the flow of this from clue to answer is a little awkward for me, because there’s no reason for Michelangelo to say the SCULPT part of the answer. But I can’t think of a way to word the clue to better fit the answer, and it is a pun worth using. It does have real words on each side of the hyphen, which I appreciate. The cartoon and pun did make me smile. So thumb’s up overall. I like that Jeff’s cartoon represents the history you recount; the early stage of the statue doesn’t appear to be anything noteworthy. Since Michelangelo had to work with what the partially carved lower body that the two earlier sculptors left him, his artistic achievement is even more remarkable.
That puzzled me too David. Sculpt, sure!! So glad he did! An amazing statue. LL