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48 free Michelangelo's David trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Michelangelo's David trivia quiz is about the statue itself, not the sculptor's whole career (for that, try our Michelangelo trivia page). It follows the 'giant' from the block of Carrara marble that Agostino di Duccio abandoned in 1466, through the 26-year-old Michelangelo winning the commission in 1501, the tools he used, the committee of Leonardo and Botticelli that argued over where to put it, and the four-day journey on greased logs to the Piazza della Signoria in 1504. It then covers the statue's rough later life: stones thrown at it the year it debuted, the arm broken in the 1527 riot, the acid cleaning of 1843, the move to the Accademia in 1873, the 1991 hammer attack, the cracked ankles, the 2004 restoration fight, and the plaster cast with a detachable fig leaf that Queen Victoria passed on to the V&A. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's article on the statue and each explanation adds one further detail. Suitable for art history students, Florence-bound travellers and anyone who has stood in the Accademia and wondered why the hands are so big.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How tall is Michelangelo's David?
5.17 metres
Michelangelo's David stands 5.17 metres tall without its pedestal, carved from a single marble block that had lain neglected in the cathedral workshop for decades.
Q 02In which Italian city was the David carved and unveiled?
Florence
Florence unveiled the statue outside the Palazzo della Signoria, seat of its republican government, on 8 September 1504.
Q 03Between which years did Michelangelo work on the David?
1501-1504
Michelangelo worked on the David from 1501-1504: he began carving on the morning of 13 September 1501, and the finished statue was installed outside the Palazzo della Signoria in 1504.
Q 04How old was Michelangelo when he won the commission for the David in 1501?
26
Born in March 1475, Michelangelo was 26 when the cathedral overseers handed him the block in summer 1501; the older Andrea Sansovino had also sought the job.
Q 05For which building was the David originally commissioned?
Florence Cathedral
Florence Cathedral's board of works, the Operai del Duomo, commissioned the David as one of twelve Old Testament figures planned for positions high on the building's exterior.
Q 06Which sculptor first began roughing out the marble block in 1464, decades before Michelangelo touched it?
Agostino di Duccio
Agostino di Duccio began blocking out the legs, feet and torso in 1464 but stopped in 1466, the year his master Donatello died, leaving the marble abandoned in the cathedral yard.
Q 07From which quarrying town did the marble for the David come?
Carrara
Carrara's Fantiscritti quarry, worked since Roman times, supplied the block, a mediocre grade of white marble hauled by ox cart to the coast and then by barge up the Arno.
Q 08What nickname did the Florentine cathedral overseers give the neglected marble block?
Il gigante
The overseers' records called the block Il gigante, the giant; a 1500 inventory listed it as 'a certain figure of marble called David, badly blocked out and supine'.
Q 09How long did the cathedral overseers' contract give Michelangelo to finish the statue?
Two years
Two years was the term set in the contract, which paid Michelangelo six gold florins a month and gave him a workspace in the cathedral yard; the statue was finished early in 1504.
Q 10Which sculptor was contracted in 1476 to resume work on the block, only for the deal to fall through?
Antonio Rossellino
Antonio Rossellino was hired in 1476 to take over the abandoned block, but his contract was cancelled almost at once and the marble sat exposed in the yard for another 25 years.
Q 11Which two famous artists sat on the 1504 committee deciding where the David should stand?
Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli
Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli both sat on the committee; of nine sites discussed, Leonardo favoured the sheltered Loggia dei Lanzi while Botticelli wanted the statue beside the cathedral.
Q 12Whose bronze sculpture did the David replace at the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria in 1504?
Donatello's Judith and Holofernes
Donatello's Judith and Holofernes, a bronze seized from the Medici palace in 1495, was shifted to the Loggia dei Lanzi; both works cast a tyrant-slayer as an emblem of the republic's defiance of the exiled Medici.
Q 13How was the finished statue moved the half mile from the cathedral workshop to the piazza in 1504?
Q 21What did Michelangelo carve behind David's right leg to help support the statue's weight?
A tree stump
A tree stump behind the right leg braces the weight of the marble figure; Michelangelo borrowed the support from antique statues, and it was gilded soon after the unveiling.
Q 22Which statesman, Vasari relates, complained that the David's nose was too big?
Piero Soderini
Piero Soderini, the republic's gonfaloniere for life, thought the nose too thick, Vasari relates; Michelangelo climbed up, let marble dust fall without touching the stone, and Soderini pronounced it improved.
Q 23In 1991 a man named Piero Cannata attacked the David with what?
A hammer
Rolled on fourteen greased logs
Rolled on fourteen greased logs, the statue hung upright in a wooden frame and was inched along by more than 40 men; the journey took four days, as Luca Landucci's diary records.
Q 14What happened to the David during its four-day move to the piazza in 1504?
It was pelted with stones
It was pelted with stones by youths at night, the diarist Luca Landucci recorded, so a guard was posted over the statue as it inched across the city between 14 and 18 May 1504.
Q 15Which part of the David was broken into three pieces during an anti-Medici riot in 1527?
Its left arm
Its left arm was snapped into three pieces by a bench hurled from a window of the Palazzo della Signoria; the boy Giorgio Vasari and his friend Francesco Salviati gathered the fragments, reattached in 1543.
Q 16In which year was the David moved indoors to the Galleria dell'Accademia?
1873
In 1873 the statue was crated and hauled across the city on a temporary railway to the Accademia, where it waited under a wooden shelter until its purpose-built tribune opened in 1882.
Q 17What is unusual about the David compared with earlier Davids by Donatello and Verrocchio?
Goliath is left out entirely
Goliath is left out entirely: Donatello and Verrocchio showed the victor standing over the giant's severed head, but Michelangelo's David stares into the distance, brow tense, in the moment before the fight.
Q 18Which classical term names the weight-shifted stance that Michelangelo's David adopts?
Contrapposto
Contrapposto, the weight-on-one-leg pose with hips and shoulders tilted in opposite directions, was a hallmark of antique sculpture traced back to the Doryphoros of Polykleitos, around 440 BC.
Q 19Which parts of the David are unusually large for both Michelangelo's work and antique models?
Head and hands
Head and hands are outsized, the right hand especially, probably because the figure was meant to be read from far below on the cathedral roofline.
Q 20What does David hold in his left hand, draped over his shoulder?
A sling
A sling lies in his left hand, draped over his shoulder, its strap running down to the right hand; the strap was gilded the summer after the statue was installed.
A hammer was the weapon: Cannata, an unemployed artist, smashed the second toe of the left foot on 14 September 1991 before visitors wrestled him away, and the toe was later rebuilt from the fragments.
Q 24In 2023 a lesson showing the David cost a principal her job in which US state?
Florida
Florida: Hope Carrasquilla, principal of Tallahassee Classical School, was forced out in March 2023 after parents complained that a sixth-grade art lesson showing the statue was pornographic.
Q 25What did the sculptor Aristodemo Costoli use to clean the David, causing lasting damage?
Hydrochloric acid
Hydrochloric acid, in a 50 per cent solution, stripped the statue's original protective wax and left the marble surface pitted and porous.
Q 26How was the David protected during the Second World War?
Packed in sand and entombed in brick
Michelangelo's other sculptures in the Accademia were sealed up in the same way.
Q 27Which restorer resigned from the 2004 project after refusing to use the wet 'poultice' cleaning method?
Agnese Parronchi
Agnese Parronchi favoured dry cleaning with soft brushes and erasers and quit in 2003; the job passed to Cinzia Parnigoni under Accademia director Franca Falletti.
Q 28Which parts of the David have developed cracks that engineers monitor closely?
The ankles and the tree trunk
The ankles and the tree trunk show hairline cracks, found in a 2014 engineering study, attributed to a slight forward tilt that concentrates the statue's weight in its thin lower supports.
Q 29To whom did Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany give a plaster cast of the David in 1857?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria received the cast as a diplomatic gesture after Tuscany blocked the export of a Ghirlandaio painting to London; she promptly passed it on to the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Q 30What accessory does the Victoria and Albert Museum's plaster cast of the David come with?
A detachable fig leaf
A detachable fig leaf was made so it could be hung from two hooks before royal visits, after the queen was reportedly shocked by the nudity; the museum keeps it in a case beside the cast.