Michelangelo's David

John T. Paoletti is Professor of the History of Art, Emeritus, and the William R. Kenan Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University. He taught the history of Italian Renaissance art and of the art of the twentieth century from 1972 to 2009. He received Wesleyan's Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the College Art Association's Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award. He has been a Fellow at the School of Historical Studies, the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, and a visiting professor at the Villa I Tatti. From 1996 to 2000, he was the editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin. He is co-author, with Gary Radke, of Art in Renaissance Italy, now in its fourth edition. He is co-editor, with Roger Crum, of Renaissance Florence: A Social History (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

'Michelangelo's David is a valuable link in an ongoing chain of Michelangelo studies, and a detailed study of the extended history and ambiguity of the statue's historical, civic, political, and Christian connotations …' Joost Joustra, Oxford Art Journal

• 1. The commission and history of the David; 2. David, narrative ambiguity, and the competition with antiquity; 3. The David and sculpture at the cathedral; 4. David and the symbols of the state at the Palazzo della Signoria; 5. Naked men in piazza; Appendix I: documents for Michelangelo's David and its predecessors; Appendix II: report of the commission to advise on the placement of the David.