Michelangelo
Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499. The republic was changing after the fall of its leader, anti-Renaissance priest Girolamo Savonarola, who was executed in 1498, and the rise of the "gonfaloniere" Piero Soderini. Michelangelo was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the statue of David, in 1504. The masterwork definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. A team of consultants, including Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, was called together to decide upon its placement, ultimately the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in the Academia while a replica occupies its place in the square.
David (Donatello)
The marble "David" is Donatello's earliest known important commission, and it is a work closely tied to tradition, giving few signs of the innovative approach to representation that the artist would develop as he matured. Although the positioning of the legs hints at a classical contrapposto, the figure stands in an elegant Gothic sway that surely derives from Lorenzo Ghiberti. The face is curiously blank (curiously, that is, if one expects naturalism, but very typical of the Gothic style), and David seems almost unaware of the head of his vanquished foe that rests between his feet. Some scholars have seen an element of personality – a kind of cockiness -(contrapposto=relaxed stance, shifted weight) suggested by the twist of the torso and the akimbo placement of the left arm, but overall the effect of the figure is rather bland. However it was intended to be gilded and painted, set on a pedestal with mosaic, and also seen from a considerable distance below. Donatello distorted the proportions of the figure to allow for this angle of view. The head of Goliath, lying at David's feet, "is carved with great assurance and reveals the young sculptor’s genuinely Renaissance interest in an ancient Roman type of mature, bearded head".