Michelangelo’s eighteen-foot (five point four-meter) tall marble…

Michelangelo’s eighteen-foot (five point four-meter) tall marble statue David, completed on September 8, 1504, and believed to be the first freestanding statue mounted on a plinth since classical times, is regarded by the Florentines as a symbol of civic virtue.

For political reasons, the grand council of the new Florentine republic decides to erect the statue in front of the main entrance to Palazzo Vecchio rather than atop one of the facade buttresses of the Cathedral of Florence, as originally intended.

Raphael apparently moves in this year to Florence, where he will learn much from the art of the most advanced Florentine masters, especially Leonardo da Vinci.