David

Michelangelo's David is a marble figure 5.17 metres tall, carved by Michelangelo between 1501 and 1504. It was the first colossal marble statue made since classical antiquity, and it set the standard for sculpture in the century that followed. The block itself had a history before Michelangelo touched it. The Operai, the board in charge of Florence Cathedral, had planned a series of giant Old Testament figures for the buttresses of the cathedral's east end, and in 1464 they commissioned Agostino di Duccio to carve a David. He obtained a huge block from the Fantiscritti quarry at Carrara in 1465, roughed out the legs and torso and then stopped work in 1466, and for decades the half-shaped block lay in the cathedral workshops, described in an inventory of 1500 as badly blocked out and lying on its back. Florentines called it the Giant.

By January 1504 it was clear that a figure weighing around 8.5 tonnes could never be lifted onto the cathedral roof. A committee of about thirty citizens, including Giuliano da Sangallo, Leonardo da Vinci and Piero di Cosimo, debated where to put it, and the statue was placed beside the entrance of the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of the city's government, where it replaced Donatello's Judith and Holofernes. Moving it half a mile from the workshop took four days, and it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. Set before the town hall of a young republic threatened by the exiled Medici, the boy who defeated Goliath became a political emblem of Florentine liberty.

Michelangelo broke with earlier versions of the subject, which showed David triumphant over Goliath's severed head. His David has not yet fought. In the reading of scholars such as Howard Hibbard, he is shown before the fight, sizing up his opponent: his brow is drawn, his neck tense, the sling draped over his shoulder, and he stands in contrapposto with his weight on the right foot, as if about to move. The head and the right hand are unusually large, probably because the statue was designed to be seen from far below on the cathedral. A tree stump behind the right leg, a device borrowed from ancient sculpture, helps carry the weight.

The statue stood outdoors for more than 350 years. Cracks appeared in its left leg in the mid-19th century, and in 1873 it was moved into the Galleria dell'Accademia; a replica has stood at the original spot on Piazza della Signoria since 1910. In 1991 a man attacked it with a hammer and broke off part of a toe, and in 2004 it received its first major cleaning since 1843. Cracks in the legs are still monitored. The Accademia, founded in 1784, also holds Michelangelo's four unfinished Prisoners, meant for the tomb of Pope Julius II, and his unfinished Saint Matthew, figures that show his method of freeing a form from the stone. Nearly a million and a half people visit each year, about four thousand a day.

Getting there

The Galleria dell'Accademia is in the historic centre of Florence, and Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR), is about 6 km away. The replica in Piazza della Signoria can be seen at any time.