On this day in 1504, a block of Carrara marble that nobody wanted stood finished in the Piazza della Signoria. It had sat in the cathedral workshop for decades: tall, narrow, already cut into by earlier hands who started and stopped. Too thin for a figure, the reasoning went. Michelangelo took it at twenty-six and worked it until 1504, and the narrowness is still there if you look — the figure is shallow front to back, the weight thrown onto the right leg, the head turned left over the shoulder. He carved a man watching something approach.

The part I keep returning to is the walk. Once it was done, five metres and many tons of marble had to cross Florence from the cathedral yard to the square. They built a timber cradle and suspended the statue inside it so it swung rather than jolted, laid greased beams under it, and moved it a little at a time. Roughly forty men, several days, a few streets. No one recorded the name of whoever checked the ropes each morning.

The original went indoors to the Accademia in 1873, and a marble copy took its place on the square in 1910. That is what stands in the photograph below, against the rough stone of the Palazzo Vecchio, in the light the sculptor expected.