48"x14"x15"

55.0 lbs.

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The original David is nearly eighteen feet tall and weighs well over nine tons, sculpted from a massive single block of costly Carrara marble. The statue depicts the biblical character David, King of Israel, who fought the Philistine giant Goliath.

Until now, art historians knew only that the large block came from the Carrara quarries in Tuscany, which still produce many types and qualities of marble.

Analysts have now used three tiny samples, retrieved from the second toe of the left foot of David when the figure was damaged in act of vandalism in 1991, to track down the marble's origin. Not only were they able to determine the exact spot of excavation - the Fantiscritti quarries in Miseglia, the central of three small valleys in Carrara - they also found that Michelangelo's marble is of mediocre quality, filled with microscopic holes, and likely to degrade faster than many other marbles.

By analysing the samples it was defined once and for all where it came from, and it was also confirmed that the marble is actually rather poor quality. It probably means that Michelangelo took it because it was lying around unused and it was free.