David is a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture in marble created from 1501 to 1504 by Michelangelo. With a height of 5.17 metres (17 ft 0 in), the David was not only the first colossal marble statue made in the High Renaissance, but also the first since classical antiquity, setting a precedent for the 16th century and beyond. David was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of twelve prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, but was instead placed in the public square in front of the Piazza della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. In 1873, the statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence. In 1910 a replica was installed at the original site on the public square.
The biblical figure David was a favoured subject in the art of Florence. Because of the nature of the figure it represented, the statue soon came to symbolize the defence of civil liberties embodied in the 1494 constitution of the Republic of Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the political aspirations of the Medici family.
Plans were being made by the Operai del Duomo for a statue of David long before Michelangelo's began his work on it, which lasted from 1501 to 1504. The statue's commission was made during a decisive period in the history of the Florentine republic established before the expulsion of the Medici. The advantages of democratic government never materialized, and internal circumstances grew worse as dangers from without increased. Lorenzo de' Medici's successors and their supporters were a constant threat to the republic, and it was in defiance of the menace they represented that the project of a marble David was renewed.
The Overseers of the Office of Works, known as the Operai del Duomo, were officers of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, the organization charged with the construction and maintenance of the new Cathedral of Florence. The Operai consisted of a 12-member committee that organized competitions, chose the best entries, commissioned the prevailing artists, and paid for the finished work. Most of them were members of the influential woolen cloth guild, the Arte della Lana. They had plans long before Michelangelo's involvement to commission a series of twelve large sculptures of Old Testament prophets for the twelve spurs, or protrusions, generated by the four diagonal buttresses that helped support the enormous weight of the cathedral dome.
In 1410, Donatello had made the first of the series of statues, a colossal figure of Joshua in terracotta, gessoed and painted white to give it the appearance of marble at a distance. Although Charles Seymour Jr says Donatello's protégé Agostino di Duccio was commissioned in 1463 to create a terracotta figure of Hercules for the series, almost certainly under the supervision of Donatello, Paoletti writes that "The term 'hercules' may not be a specific indication of the subject of the figure but simply a synonym... used at the time for a 'giant' or very large figure."
Ready to continue their project, in 1464 the Operai contracted Agostino to create a marble sculpture of the young David, a symbol of Florence, to be mounted high on the eastern end of the Duomo. This was to be formed in the Roman manner from several blocks of marble, but in 1465 Agostino himself went to Carrara, a town in the Apuan Alps, and acquired a very large block of bianco ordinario from the Fantiscritti quarry. He began work on the statue but got only as far as beginning to shape the torso, legs, and feet, roughing out drapery, and possibly hollowing a hole between the legs. For unknown reasons his work on the block of marble halted with the death of his master Donatello in 1466. Antonio Rossellino, also a Florentine, was commissioned in 1476 to resume the work, but the contract was apparently rescinded, and the block lay neglected and exposed to the weather in the yard of the cathedral workshop for another twenty-five years. This was of great concern to the Operai authorities, as such a large piece of marble was not only costly, but represented considerable labour and difficulty in its transportation to Florence.
In 1500, an inventory of the cathedral workshops described the piece as "a certain figure of marble called David, badly blocked out and supine." A year later, documents showed that the Operai were determined to find an artist who could take this large piece of marble and turn it into a finished work of art. They ordered that the block of stone, which they called il gigante (the giant), be "raised on its feet" so that a master experienced in this kind of work might examine it and express an opinion. Though Leonardo da Vinci among others was consulted, and Andrea Sansovino was also keen to get the commission, it was Michelangelo, at 26 years of age, who convinced the Operai that he deserved the commission. On 16 August 1501, Michelangelo was given the official contract to undertake this task. It said (English translation of the Latin text):
... the Consuls of the Arte della Lana and the Lords Overseers being met, have chosen as sculptor to the said Cathedral the worthy master, Michelangelo, the son of Lodovico Buonarrotti, a citizen of Florence, to the end that he may make, finish and bring to perfection the male figure known as the Giant, nine braccia in height, already blocked out in marble by Maestro Agostino grande, of Florence, and badly blocked; and now stored in the workshops of the Cathedral. The work shall be completed within the period and term of two years next ensuing, beginning from the first day of September ...
He began carving the statue early in the morning on 13 September, a month after he was awarded the contract. The contract provided him a workspace in the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore behind the Duomo, paid him a salary of six fiorini per month, and allowed him two years to complete the sculpture.
When the finished statue was moved from the Opera del Duomo to the Piazza della Signoria over the course of four days, as reported by two contemporary diarists, Luca Landucci and Pietro di Marco Parenti, a guard was placed to protect it from violence by other artists in Florence who had hoped for the commission. They were hostile to Michelangelo because of his bold request to the wardens of the Cathedral and the governor of the city, Piero Soderini. Despite the precaution, the sculpture was damaged by stones, leaving still visible marks on the upper part of its back. Four youths from prominent Florentine families were subsequently arrested by the Otto di Guardia and three were imprisoned for what may have been simple vandalism without a political motive.
Michelangelo regarded a single block of stone as containing all the possible conceptions for a work of art, and believed that the artist's task is sculpting the marble block to reveal the ideal form within, an expression of his Neo-Platonic belief that body and mind are separate, and must work in concert and strive to attain union with one another and with the divine. In later years, speaking of his early commissions sculpting marble, he contended that he was merely liberating figures that were already existent in the stone, and that he could see them in his mind's eye.
Giorgio Vasari wrote of Michelangelo sculpting the Prisoners that his method was to chisel the parts in highest relief first, then gradually revealing the lower parts. According to Franca Falletti, the passage describes Michelangelo's process of working marble in general. Lengthy preparatory work was done before the actual sculpting began – this included sketches, drawings and the making of small-scale terracotta or wax models. After these preliminary studies he went directly to sculpting the marble, using the method described by Vasari. He chiseled layer after layer from the main face of the stone, and then gradually more and more of the other sides. The unfinished state of the Prisoners demonstrates this process, and David must have been sculpted in the same manner.