ACCADEMIA, David - Second Part

After you've seen him from the front, go inside the Tribune and admire David from several points of view and from different distances. You will uncover a masterpiece that continually offers you interesting ideas and unexpected details, and you'll understand why David is something more than a perfectly successful masterpiece from a precise era of history and art, and has become a timeless icon capable of resisting even the most absurd and vulgar reproductions and revisions. The physical and symbolic greatness of this warrior with a slingshot is so enormous that it always provokes strong reactions, sometimes even violent.

Can you imagine that according to the original project, this colossus should now be more than eighty feet high up, almost at the top of the Cathedral?! David was never actually placed where he was originally intended to stand. After three years of intense work, when the city authorities finally saw the statue they immediately realized that they needed to find it an alternative home. In fact, no other sculpture could ever represent the Republic's values with the same overwhelming power. A commission of artists was immediately appointed, including those of the caliber of Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, who were assigned the task of deciding where to place the work. After long and heated discussions, David was placed in front of Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of the city government, where you can still admire it today, albeit as a copy. In that spot, Michelangelo's work would become the emblem of republican virtues and freedom against tyranny....