Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/61

 “Look now.”

“Now,” replied Soderini, “it pleases me much better. You have given it life.”

Michael Angelo then descended, laughing silently.

We can imagine we can read the sculptor’s silent contempt in this work. It represents tumultuous strength at rest. It is, as it were, swollen with disdain and melancholy. It is smothered within the walls of a museum. It requires the open air, “the light on the square,” as Michael Angelo once put it.

On January 25, 1504, a committee of artists, including Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Perugino and Leonardo da Vinci, deliberated over the question of the site for the “David.” At the request of Michael Angelo they decided to place it in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. The removal of the enormous block was entrusted to the architects of the Cathedral. On the evening of May 14 the marble colossus was brought out from the wooden construction where it was kept, a wall above a door being demolished in doing so. During the night the populace attempted to shatter it with stones and it had to be strongly guarded. Slowly the huge statue—suspended in an