The rising star of Italian sculpture, Michelangelo Buonarroti, at the young age of 25, was famous for creating Pietà, that we still admire today in San Pietro. In 1501, the Gonfaloniere Pier Soderini commissioned Michelangelo to build David. On September 8, 1504, a large crowd waited at the Palazzo Vecchio “Arengario”, to admire for the first time Michelangelo's David statue in auguration, the extraordinary artwork everyone was talking about.
The Florentine republic, after the fall of the Medici, was in a great crisis. Adwarf among giants, envied by the great European courts and the papacy. To summarize, David against Goliath.
Anartwork born from pride and the struggle for freedom. These are precisely the elements that young Michelangelo tried to portray from his struggles with the immense block of marble (measuring in height: 5.30 meters). Something that great artists, like Agostino di Duccio and Rossellino, had tried to tame and could not.
David remained in the “Arengario” until August 1873 to be transferred, and a valuable copy was placed in 1910 made by Luigi Arrighetti. David is now permanently in Galleria dell’Accademia where he still is admired by millions of visitors every year.
