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.
Michael Hirst (art historian)
David Michael Geoffrey Hirst was born on 5 September 1933 and studied at New College, Oxford, and the Courtauld Institute of Art. Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and a Fellow of the Academy since 1983, Hirst has been one of the foremost specialists on the drawings of Michelangelo. Indeed, such was his international standing in the world of Michelangelo studies that he was made a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Restoration of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling in 1987, and the following year curated an exhibition on Michelangelo as Draftsman for the National Gallery of Art in Washington.