OUR TRIP TO ITALY WITH RICK STEVES
16
After some free time in the afternoon, we reconvened in the evening at the Academia Gallery to admire Michelangelo's masterpiece, David.
David is an Italian Renaissance sculpture in marble that Michelangelo created from 1501 to 1504. With a height of 17 feet and weight of 12,000 pounds, David was not only the first colossal marble statue made in the High Renaissance, but also the first since classical antiquity.
The marble used to carve this Michelangelo sculpture is one big slab of white Carrara, extracted from quarries in Tuscany. The artist showed his chiseling skills to create the massive statue with just a single slab instead of joining separate pieces.