David

In 1501 the cathedral’s works and the wool guild gave a 26-year-old Michelangelo a block of Carrara marble more than five metres tall that Agostino di Duccio had begun carving nearly forty years before and given up on; the Florentines called it the Giant. He worked on it in the courtyard of the cathedral’s works, boarded off from prying eyes, until 1504.

He chose the moment before the fight: David has the sling over his left shoulder and the stone in his right hand, his weight on one leg, and turns his head to look at Goliath. The statue was meant for a buttress high on the cathedral, but a committee that included Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli put it at the door of the Palazzo Vecchio instead, where it was unveiled in September 1504: the young hero who killed a giant, standing for the Republic of Florence against its powerful enemies.

In 1527, in a revolt against the Medici, a bench thrown from a window of the palace broke his left arm into three pieces. In 1873 he was moved indoors, to a tribuna built for him at the end of the Galleria dell’Accademia, and in 1910 a marble copy took his place by the palace door, on the left as you face it, where it stands in the game. Stand before it in 3D ›