I Samuel 17

Looming and portentous, the giant-killer stands alone in a hall of his own at the Academy in Florence. His taut torso is as Greek as geometry, but the head and the eyes are Old Testament. I move toward the statue past Michelangelo's other children, those stony images flanking the corridor, Saint Matthew, stunned by the good news, and the four prisoners, twisting their trunks in anguish. I circle the pedestal, feeling the force of David's defiance, a fire in the eye that Pythagoras never knew.