Lost wax bronze replica.
Author: Michelangelo (1475-1574)
Period: 1501-1504
The statue represents the biblical hero David, a much loved subject in the Florentine Renaissance.
It was erected as a symbol of the civil liberty reached by the city of Florence with the advent of the Republic, when it became an independent city-state but still strongly threatened by the most powerful cities that surrounded it and by the Medici dynasty who wanted to take back the power of the city.Michelangelo was the third and last sculptor to get his hands on the gigantic block of white Cararra marble that had been chosen for the sculpture of David. The story behind the making of this sculpture is as famous as it is interesting. The block from which the David was sculpted was considered unsuitable to create a sculpture, however Michelangelo took this challenge to heart and succeeded in creating one of the greatest masterpieces of art. Curious is the choice to represent David not in a canonical way, that is, as a young man who had just defeated Goliath, but presents him to us as a young man in the moments immediately preceding the killing of the monster. Great pathos is given both to the face of the young man, whose expressiveness and concentration are shocking, and to the hand that will fulfill the divine will. This work is one of the symbols of Renaissance art and is still one of the most popular in Florence today. The finished statue never came to be placed on the terraces of the Cathedral of Santa Maia del Fiore, but was rather positioned in Piazza della Signoria, where it could be admired and as a warning for the entire Florentine population. The original marble masterpiece, 517 cm high, is located in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence.
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