Michelangelo's David was unveiled in Florence
On this day · 8 September 1504
On September 8, 1504, a colossal nude carved from a discarded slab of marble became Florence's defiant civic emblem.
On September 8, 1504, Florence publicly unveiled Michelangelo’s David beside the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of the city’s republican government. The figure of the biblical hero, poised and watchful before his fight with Goliath, was read at once as a warning to Florence’s rivals.
Michelangelo, just 26 when commissioned in 1501, had carved the giant from a single block of Carrara marble that earlier sculptors had abandoned as hopelessly flawed. Standing about 5.17 meters (nearly 17 feet) and weighing more than 5,600 kilograms, the finished statue dwarfed its doubters.
Moving it the half-mile from the cathedral workshop took roughly 40 men and four days, the giant suspended in a wooden cradle.
The original stood outdoors for almost four centuries until, in 1873, it was moved indoors to the Galleria dell’Accademia to protect it from the weather. A replica now occupies its old place in the piazza, where the marble David once stood guard.
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