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gallery

At the age of 26, Michelangelo was given a leftover block of marble that came from the mountains of Carrara, one which had previously been worked on by various other artists. The piece was intended as a monumental work, a testimony to the city's republican pride, not one for close confinement, but was moved to the Accademia Gallery in 1873 (from outside the Palazzo Vecchio, where this replica now stands ) to protect it from the ravages of time and the weather. Michelangelo took three years to finish his David. This great work would confirm him as even more than just Florence's greatest sculptor. A giant almost four and a half meters high and the only large nude sculpted after ancient times, as no-one had previously dared to challenge the Greek and Roman masterpieces.