The year is 1501. Michelangelo, aged 26, is in Rome to sculp the St. Peter’s Pietà. He is asked to make a large statue of David in Florence.
Michelangelo returns to his native city, works in great secrecy, and after three years delivers his marble giant, over five meters in height. There is great rejoicing in Piazza della Signoria on 8 September 1504, when the statue is erected in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.
Why did Florence want this gigantic David? And why was it chosen as the symbol of civil liberty?
We reconstruct the history of the world’s most famous statue in the settings where it unfolds, among the churches and places of the Florentine Reinassance. Here we find other Davids, in marble and bronze, by other great artists from Donatello to Verrocchio.
Consulting and commentary by Antonio Paolucci
