David Does Italy

The Giant of Florence

Before he was the most famous statue in the world, David was a problem: a towering, flawed block of Carrara marble that two sculptors had started and abandoned. Florentines called it simply il Gigante, "the Giant." It took a 26-year-old named Michelangelo Buonarroti to see the hero hiding inside.

A block nobody could finish

In 1464 the Opera del Duomo, the board that ran Florence Cathedral, hired the sculptor Agostino di Duccio to make a giant figure to stand high on the cathedral's east end. The following year a huge block was cut at the Fantiscritti quarry near Carrara, in the Apuan Alps, and hauled to Florence. Agostino only roughed it out before stopping, around 1466. In 1476 the job passed to Antonio Rossellino, but his contract soon ended too. The marble was full of small flaws, and it lay exposed to the weather in the cathedral workshop yard for some 25 years.

Michelangelo takes the commission

On 16 August 1501 the cathedral board gave the Giant to Michelangelo, then 26, for 400 ducats. He worked largely in secret behind a screen in the workshop, carving straight into the old, damaged block. By early 1504 the statue was essentially done. Some parts were originally gilded: a garland in his hair, the tree stump behind his right leg, and the sling.

Too beautiful for the rooftop

David was meant to join a series of prophets on the cathedral's high buttresses, far above the street. Once Florence saw him, nobody wanted him lost up there. On 25 January 1504 a committee of the city's greatest artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Filippino Lippi and Perugino, met to decide where he should go. Florence placed him at the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria, the heart of the Republic's government. He was unveiled there on 8 September 1504, a symbol of a small republic standing up to giants.

Reading the statue

The moment before. Earlier sculptors, like Donatello and Verrocchio, showed David triumphant over Goliath's severed head. Michelangelo chose the tense moment before the fight: the brow is furrowed, the eyes fixed on a distant enemy.

Contrapposto. His weight rests on the right leg while the left leg relaxes forward, so the hips and shoulders tilt in opposite directions. This classical pose makes the marble look relaxed and alive.

The sling. The sling hangs over his left shoulder and down his back, and the stone sits in his right hand. It's easy to miss from the front.

The big hands and head. David's head and right hand are noticeably oversized. Many scholars think this was deliberate, because the statue was planned to be seen from far below. The large hand is also a nod to his nickname manu fortis, "strong of hand."

The gaze toward Rome. Florentines like to say that in Piazza della Signoria, David's watchful glare was turned toward Rome, as a warning to the powerful. It's a much-loved local legend rather than documented fact, but it suits him.

Riots, lightning and a hammer

• 1512Lightning strikes the statue's base.
• 1527During the uprising that drove the Medici from Florence, defenders inside the Palazzo Vecchio hurl furniture from the windows. A bench strikes David and breaks his left arm into three pieces. The young Giorgio Vasari and Francesco Salviati gather the fragments, and the arm is later restored under Duke Cosimo I.
• 1800sSmall cracks are noticed in the lower legs. After more than 350 years outdoors, the rain has also worn the marble on his head and shoulders.
• 1873To protect him, David is moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia in a wooden crate rolled on rails, from 30 July to 10 August. Architect Emilio De Fabris designs a Tribune lit by a skylight, but it isn't finished until 1882.
• 1873A bronze copy, cast by Clemente Papi in 1866, is hauled up to the new Piazzale Michelangelo by nine pairs of oxen.
• 1910A marble replica takes David's original spot in Piazza della Signoria, where it still stands.
• 1991On 14 September a man hides a hammer under his jacket and strikes David's left foot, breaking the second toe. The fragments are recovered and reattached.
• 2003–04For David's 500th birthday, restorer Cinzia Parnigoni cleans him "millimeter by millimeter," mainly with distilled-water poultices, after a heated debate over wet versus dry cleaning. The work is finished in May 2004.
• TodayScientists keep monitoring fine micro-cracks in the ankles and the tree stump. They are probably linked to the statue's tilted pedestal in the piazza, and they're one reason experts are wary of ever moving him again.

David today

David stands at the end of the Accademia's Hall of the Prisoners, flanked by Michelangelo's unfinished "Prisoners," figures still struggling out of their blocks. They show exactly how he worked: freeing a figure from the stone. Above him, the skylight fills the Tribune with soft daylight, just as De Fabris intended.

Sources include the Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze, Accademia.org, Florence's official tourism site, and contemporary reporting (UPI 1991; The Guardian 2004 and 2014).