Michelangelo carves David

The story

An abandoned block of marble

In the middle of the 15th century the Opera del Duomo of Florence, the body in charge of the cathedral, ordered an enormous block of Carrara marble, more than five metres tall, to make a statue to be placed high up, between the buttresses of the Cathedral. It was a difficult block: long and narrow, and full of tiny cracks. In 1464 the sculptor Agostino di Duccio began to rough it out, but soon gave up. Another sculptor, Antonio Rossellino, examined it twelve years later and said it was not worth working on.

For almost forty years the marble stayed in the yard of the Opera, exposed to rain and sun, and the Florentines called it, with a mixture of affection and regret, “the Giant”. It seemed that nobody was able to make anything beautiful out of it.

A young sculptor

In 1501 Florence had been a republic for only a few years: the Medici had been driven out in 1494 and the city, led by gonfalonieri (from 1502 by Pier Soderini), wanted symbols that spoke of freedom. In August 1501 the Opera del Duomo gave the Giant to a young sculptor of twenty-six, Michelangelo Buonarroti. Michelangelo was born in 1475 at Caprese, in Tuscany, and in Rome had already carved the Pietà, now in St Peter's, which had made him famous.

Michelangelo decided to carve David, the young shepherd of the Bible who defeated the giant Goliath with a sling. For the Florentines David was a dearly loved hero: a small one who beats the big one, a symbol of courage and justice. Michelangelo made a new choice. Earlier statues of David, such as those by Donatello and Verrocchio, showed him after the battle, with Goliath's head at his feet. His David is instead a young naked man, standing, with the sling over his shoulder, a moment before the fight, with a tense gaze and a frowning brow.

Three years of work

Michelangelo worked for about three years, in a wooden enclosure so as to be left in peace, carving the block very carefully: the marble was so narrow that he had to adapt the pose to its shape. He did not use a large model, but started from small sketches in wax and clay. The finished statue is more than five metres tall, about 5.17 metres without the base, and weighs about five to six tonnes.

When the statue was almost finished, in January 1504, the leaders of the city gathered a committee of artists to decide where to put it. Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli were among its members. Some suggested the Loggia dei Lanzi, others the Cathedral; in the end they chose Piazza della Signoria, in front of the palace of the city government. The transport, in mid-May 1504, took four days: the statue was tied inside a wooden frame and dragged on rollers by dozens of men through the streets, from the workshop to the square. It was unveiled on 8 September 1504.

A statue as a symbol

For the Florentines the David became the symbol of their republic: a small state, surrounded by powerful neighbours, but determined to defend itself. It is also said that during the transport some people threw stones at it, in protest against the new government; it is hard to say how much of this is true.

Over the centuries the statue suffered damage from time and from historical events. In 1527, during a revolt, a bench thrown from a window of the palace broke one of its arms. In 1873 it was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, to protect it from the weather, and a copy was put in its place in the square. In 1991 a man struck it with a hammer and broke a toe of its left foot, which was later restored.