8 June: Michelangelo's David

On this date in 1504, Michelangelo's David was set in place in the Palazzo of Florence, Italy. 10 things you might not know about the statue:

1. He is 17 feet or 5.17 metres tall. That's three times the size of an average man.
2. Michelangelo was commissioned to create David by the Arte della Lana (Guild of Wool Merchant) in 1501. It's thought that at the time, the work was top secret. Michelangelo wouldn't let anyone see his masterpiece until it was finished. The wax model he worked on was submerged in water and Michelangelo let the water out gradually, revealing it bit by bit. He'd work on each bit as it emerged. It's said he rarely ate or slept while he was working on David, and when he did sleep, he didn't bother taking his clothes or boots off.
3. The original plan was that David would be one of a series of statues on the roof of the cathedral in Florence. However, once the work was revealed, it was decided it was too beautiful to be tucked away on a rooftop and should be appreciated up close. They placed it in a public square instead. It took forty men four days to move David from the studio to the Palazzo Vecchio, even though it was less than a mile away. In 1873, officials decided to move David indoors to protect him from the weather. He was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia and a full sized replica now stands in the statue's original place. Being indoors might not be so good for David, either, though, since the thousands of tourists who come to see him every year create tiny Earthquakes as they walk past and now he suffers from tiny stress fractures.
4. You probably know this is the David from the Bible who fought and defeated Goliath. He's actually holding the sling and a stone. However, you might not know Michelangelo defied tradition when he made David. The traditional way to depict the Biblical David was after the battle, victorious, with his foot on the giant's head. This David is portrayed before the battle, looking slightly anxious.
5. He may seem perfect at first glance, but David has a couple of imperfections. His right hand is slightly too big. Rather than it being a sign that hands are so hard to depict that even Michelangelo got it wrong, it's thought to have been done on purpose as David's nickname was manu fortis—strong of hand. David also has a squint. One of his eyes is slightly askew. This is thought to have been intentional as well, because Michelangelo didn't think he was as good as the Roman masters whose work inspired him, so he intentionally give David this imperfection. Also it has been noted that David holds the sling in his left hand, suggesting he's a southpaw, but he stands like a right handed person. Finally, if you're going to be true to history, David was Jewish, therefore, he would have been circumcised – but the statue has a foreskin.
6. David was carved from a block of marble which had waited over 40 years for its purpose in life. The block probably came from the quarry of the Fantiscritti in the Miseglia district of Carrara. At least two other sculptors had tried to carve something from it, but gave up because it was too brittle and left it lying around for years. By the time it found its way to Michelangelo, it had already been chipped away at a bit, enough that Michelangelo had some constraints in terms of where David's legs and shoulders had to go. The block had gained enough notoriety to have been given a nickname – ironically, it had been dubbed, "the Giant".
7. Further proof that in politics, little ever changes. Florence was experiencing a fair bit of political unrest in the early 1500s having exiled the powerful Medici family and holding off invasions from neighbouring states. David was placed so that he was looking towards Rome, which annoyed some people who saw that as a political statement about who should govern Florence. People threw stones at him and in 1527, there was an anti-Medici riot during which thugs broke David's arm in three places. At least he didn't end up at the bottom of a river! More recently, in 1991, an artist called Piero Cannata smuggled a small hammer into the Galleria dell'Accademia and attacked David with it. He hacked off one of David's toes before being apprehended. He claimed he'd been ordered to vandalise the statue by the spirit of another Renaissance artist's model.
8. David wasn't always naked. He was equipped, in his early days, with a gold garland draped over his crown jewels. Needless to say, Queen Victoria, when she saw David in all his naked glory in 1857, was not amused. A replica sent to her by the Grand Duke of Tuscany was thought to be much to risqué for the V and A at the time and so a plaster cast fig leaf was made to cover David's naughty bits. More recently, an episode of The Simpsons has a cartoon replica on display in Springfield, and the residents demand that David should put on a pair of pants.
9. The tree trunk behind David's leg is there for a reason, too. It's there to protect the integrity of the sculpture, because carving away to much might have caused it to break.
10. There's an ongoing court case, since 2010, to ascertain whether the statue belongs to the City of Florence or the nation of Italy. Experts have been poring over the documentation for years trying to work it out.

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