We have noticed that the young student is more interested in his work when he is told that they are the features of _the_ David.

Michael Angelo carved his giant without modelling a full-size clay figure first, but with the guidance of drawings and small wax models about eighteen inches high only, carving the figure out of the block in the way that is so well seen in the unfinished Saint Matthew in the court of the Accademia delle Belle Arti, in Florence.

There are two small wax models of the David in the Casa Buonarroti at Florence, said to be Michael Angelo's designs for this figure, but they are of very doubtful authority.
Later in his life he is said to have worked from full-sized models, as Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his _Trattati dell' Oreficeria_, &c.( 82) Vasari tells the story of how Michael Angelo contented the Gonfaloniere and silenced his criticism of the David: "While still surrounded by the scaffolding Pier Soderini inspected the statue, which pleased him immensely, and when Michael Angelo was re-touching it in parts, Soderini said to him that the nose appeared to him too big.

Michael Angelo, knowing that the Gonfaloniere was close under the statue and that from this point of view the truth was not to be discerned, mounted the scaffolding, which was as high as the shoulder of the giant, and quickly took a chisel in his left hand with a little of the marble dust from the platform and began to let fall a little of it at each touch of the tool, but he did not alter the nose from what it was before; then he looked down to the Gonfaloniere, who stood watching below: 'Look at it now,' said Michael Angelo.

'I like it better.