At the age of 26 Italian painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (Michelangelo) sculpted David in Florence from a block of Carrara marble.
This masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture 5.17 meters (17 feet) high, on which Michelangelo labored for three years from September 13, 1501 to September 8, 1504, depicts the Biblical king David either after he made the decision to fight Goliath, but before the battle took place, or after the battle when he contemplated his victory.
"It came to symbolize the defense of civil liberties embodied in the Florentine Republic, an independent city state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the hegemony of the Medici themselves. This interpretation was also encouraged by the original setting of the sculpture outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence" (Wikipedia article on David (Michelangelo) accessed 12-23-2009.