In 1501, at the age of 26, Michelangelo returned to his hometown of Florence, where he spent four years completing the world-famous statue of David, which stands 2.5 metres tall, including the base, which is 5.5 metres high.
Michelangelo lived in a time of social upheaval in Italy, and his upheaval led him to question the times in which he lived. Bitterly disappointed, he poured his thoughts into his art and at the same time searched for his ideal, creating a series of heroic figures as majestic, strong and courageous as giants.
The David is the most outstanding representation of this idea. David is the biblical teenage hero who once defended the city and people of his homeland by killing the Philistine giant Goliath, who had invaded the Jews.
Instead of following his predecessors’ scenes showing David trampling the heads of his enemies under his feet after his victory over them, Michelangelo chose to show David as he greets the battle, and carved from a single block of stone, in order to make the statue appear even more majestic on its pedestal.
In this work, David is depicted as a muscular, well-built young strongman. He stands confidently and valiantly, holding the stone in his left hand, his right hand hanging down, his head turned to the left, his face handsome and his gleaming eyes gazing into the distance as if he is searching the horizon for the enemy, ready to engage in a new battle. With his majestic physique, brave and strong demeanour, his body, face and muscles tense and full, David embodies the full range of idealised masculine beauty, both outward and inward. The young hero stares straight ahead with fury, his expression full of concentration and tension and strong will, the great strength built up in his body seemingly ready to burst forth.
His posture appears to be somewhat resting, but his body posture expresses a certain tension, giving a strong sense of ‘movement in stillness’. The artist has deliberately enlarged the figure’s head and both arms to make David appear more powerful and giant in the viewer’s eyes.
What Michelangelo has created is not just a statue, but a symbol of Renaissance humanism in its full artistic expression. It celebrates the human body and celebrates justice and power, showing that people have been freed from the dark shackles of the Middle Ages and have realised the immense power of man in transforming the world. The statue is considered one of the most vaunted male nudes in the history of art, and has served as a model for future generations of artists to follow.
A journalist once asked Michelangelo: “How did you create a masterpiece like David?” He replied, “It was simple. I went to the quarry and saw a huge piece of marble and I saw David in it. All I had to do was chisel away the extra stone, remove the marble that wasn’t supposed to be there, and David was born.” This story speaks to the essence of the happiness lesson, which is to chisel away the extra stones, to get rid of restrictions, obstacles or fear of failure that are superfluous and prevent us from succeeding, as Thoreau said, “Subtraction grows the soul more than addition.” Subtraction involves removing the limitations that prevent us from reaching our potential and realising the full potential we were born with.
The original David was placed in the Florence Academy of Fine Arts in order to preserve the artwork. It was also subjected to a full cleaning not long ago. The place is visited year after year, day after day, by a constant stream of visitors. Meanwhile, replicas stand in front of the City Hall of Florence and in Piazza Michelangelo for people from all over the world to admire.
