The statue of David is a marble sculpture that Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo executed between 1501 and 1504. Michelangelo was just 26 at the time he sculpted the infamous David, slayer of Goliath.
David stands 17 feet tall and weighs more than 12,000 pounds! Sculpted from a single block of white marble, it is said that the statue took 40 men and 4 days to move from Michelangelo’s studio to the Palazzo della Signoria (now called Palazzo Vecchio), which was less than a mile apart.
50 years prior to Michelangelo carving David, sculptor Donatello began carving a David out of marble, but abandoned the project because the marble block had a flaw in it. The block was subsequently forgotten outside in the elements.
Amongst the more well-known flaws in the final David statue are the exaggerated size of David’s right hand, and the eyes (which look into the distance at conflicting angles.
In 1873, officials moved the statue of David indoors to further protect it from the elements. That move placed the statue in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy, where it still stands today. Unfortunately, the vibrations of millions of tourists moving past David on a yearly basis have created stress fractures that must continually be repaired.
Read more about the statue of David on michelangelo.org
See more works by Michelangelo here.
