The work shall be completed within the period and term of two years next ensuing, beginning from the first day of September . 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. It said (English translation of the Latin text): On 16 August 1501, Michelangelo was given the official contract to undertake this task. 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. 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. 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. 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. Antonio Rossellino, also a Florentine, was commissioned in 1476 to resume the work, but the contract was apparently rescinded, and the block lay neglected and exposed to the weather in the yard of the cathedral workshop for another twenty-five years. For unknown reasons his work on the block of marble halted with the death of his master Donatello in 1466. 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. 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. ĭonatello's protégé Agostino was commissioned by the Operai to carve a statue of the young David, a symbol of Florence, to be mounted high on the eastern end of the building. Ready to continue their project, in 1464, the Operai contracted Agostino to create a sculpture of David. A figure of Hercules, also in terracotta, was commissioned from the Florentine sculptor Agostino di Duccio in 1463 and was made perhaps under Donatello's direction.
In 1410, Donatello made the first of the statues, a figure of Joshua in terracotta.
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Consisting mostly of members of the influential woolen cloth guild, the Arte della Lana, it had plans to commission a series of twelve large sculptures of the Twelve Apostles for the buttresses of the cathedral prior to Michelangelo's involvement. The Cathedral's Overseers of the Office of Works, known as the Operai del Duomo, was a 12-member committee that organised competitions, chose the best entries, commissioned the prevailing artists, and paid for the finished work. The history of the statue begins before Michelangelo's work on it from 1501 to 1504. Because of the nature of the figure it represented, the statue soon came to symbolise the defence of civil liberties embodied in the constitution of the Republic of Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states. The biblical figure David was a favoured subject in the art of Florence. In 1873, the statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, and in 1910 replaced at the original location by a replica. With a height of 5.17 metres (17 ft 0 in), the David was the first colossal marble statue made in the early modern period following classical antiquity, a precedent for the 16th century and beyond.ĭavid was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of the Twelve Apostles to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral ( Duomo di Firenze), but was instead placed in the public square in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. Renaissance statue in Florence, Italy Davidĭavid is a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture, created from 1501 to 1504 by Michelangelo.
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