David / Rembrandt

Michelangelo's David was commissioned as a public monument by the government of Florence. In this context we might be invited to imagine David as a symbol of Florence itself: the Tuscan city is tiny compared with Rome, and in Michelangelo's lifetime Florence was also much smaller than the closer Italian city of Venice. Although Florence is the larger city in the twenty-first century, this was not true in Michelangelo's day. The population of Florence was estimated at 37,000 in 1427 and 60,000 in 1552: while Venice had a population of 180,000 in 1490. (Sources: John Najemy, A History of Florence 1200-1575; J.J. Norich, A History of Venice.) In other words, the idea of a physically-unprepossessing hero favored by God to defeat a much larger enemy -- the story of David and Goliath -- might very well have appealed to Florentines as a civic symbol of themselves. Florence...
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