The powerful statue of David began as an ill-conceived side project and ended, after four different commissions, as one of the greatest Renaissance masterpieces of art. The overseers of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Basilica of Saint Mary of the Flower, more commonly known as the Duomo) first commissioned David as part of a dozen Old Testament-inspired sculptures that would decorate the cathedral roof. The artist Donatello made the first one, a Joshua, out of terra cotta, and his student Agostino di Duccio was given the work of creating David. But Duccio did little with it — and his student did even less. The overseers gave the job to a new, 26 year-old artist named Michelangelo.

On this day, September 13, in 1501, a month after securing the commission of the statue of David, Michelangelo began work. The completed figure, three years later, stood at 17 feet and weighed nearly 6.5 tons. The next challenge for the Duomo overseers was conceiving of a way to haul it up to its intended space on the roof.

Long before the advent of elevators, the challenge of getting the David statue to the cathedral roof promised to be arduous and dangerous for the workers and the work alike. Instead, the sculpture was placed on wooden beams and moved in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, Florence’s capital building, his watchful gaze turned towards Rome. David came to symbolize the fierce independence of Florence, and stood in front of the building until 1873, when it was moved indoors to a museum, to protect it from the elements. A fiberglass replica of David was placed in front of the Palazzo instead.