David;+Michelangelo,+1504

frontal view ||
 * Copy for Popularity **
 * Creator || Michelangelo ||
 * Title || David
 * Date || 1501-1504 ||
 * Material || marble ||
 * Measurements || height 13 feet 5 inches ||
 * Repository || Galleria dell'Accademia (Florence, Italy) ||
 * ARTstor Collection || Art, Archaeology and Architecture (Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives) ||

viewed in natural light from 1:30pm to 7:30 pm in July ||
 * Creator || copy after Michelangelo Buonarroti ||
 * Title || David
 * Date || original, 1501 ||
 * Location || Piazza della Signoria, Florence, Italy ||
 * Description || Photographer: Ralph Lieberman ||
 * ARTstor Collection || Ralph Lieberman Archive (Harvard University) ||

**HISTORY:**

Michelangelo created //David // from 1501 to 1504. It was commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the Florence Cathedral. Instead, the statue was placed in a square outside the Palazzo della Signoria. This is where the government was housed in Florence in September of 1504. The statue was meant to symbolize the defense of civil liberties embodied in the Florentine Republic. The eyes of David were turned to glare at Rome to reinforce the power of the Medici family in Florence (Berti, 1998 ).

Probably being the most famous sculpture of Michelangelo’s, //David // has also become the most wildly replicated statue to date. In 1873, //David // was relocated to the Accademia Gallery in Florence. This move was meant to protect it from the weather elements for conservation and preservation of this important statue. A copy was cast in 1910 and now stands in its original space in the Loggio dellaSignoria, in front of the Palazzo della Signoria (Launer, 2005).

A plaster cast of David was made in the Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This cast was intended for educational uses for art students, which also had a detachable fig leaf, that was added for modesty for visits by Queen Victoria (now without fig leaf, an earlier fig-leafed version having been toppled by an earthquake in 1971) (Mitford, 1998). There is another cast in the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the open air Middelheim Sculpture Museum in Belgium. Replicas of the statue have been used as gifts, including a gift from Florence to the municipality of Jerusalem to mark the 3,000th anniversary of David’s conquest of the city. The gift became problematic when many people in Jerusalem saw it as pornographic and wanted the gift to be declined. Other famous replicas can be found in the United States; Delaware Park, Buffalo, New York, Ceasars Palace in Las Vegas, John and Mable Ringling Museums of Art in Sarasota, Florida and most importantly in the Palace of Living Art at the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California. This last one was actually created from marble taken from Michelangelo’s own quarry outside of Pietrasanta, Italy. This replica is now located at the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum in St. Augustine, Florida (Yi,1997).

**SOURCES:**

Berti, l. (1998). //All the works of michelangelo//. Florence: Bonechi Edizioni "Il Turismo".

Launer, J. (2005). The many faces of david. //An International Journal of Medicine//, //98//(10), 777-778.

Mitford, J. (1998). //The american way of death revisited//. Vintage Books.

Yi, D. (1997, November 17). House of 'david': when 17 replicas of michelangelo's famed statue adorn the outside of a home, is it art or excess? . //Los Angeles Times//, 1.