Michelangelo’s David is one of those works of art that we think we know. We see him on postcards, posters, and T-shirts. He is reproduced so often that it is easy to forget what he really is. In Florence, standing seventeen feet tall, the marble figure looks less like a souvenir and more like a revelation.

This was not a statue carved from perfect stone. It came from a massive block that other sculptors had abandoned as too flawed to use. Michelangelo, only twenty-six years old, took on the challenge and spent three years chiseling away until the figure he saw inside was finally free. What emerged was not just a biblical hero, but a symbol of a city’s defiance, a republic daring to stand against powerful enemies.