In the National Museum of the Bargello we can admire the bronze statue of David by Donatello, one of the greatest sculptors of the Florentine Quattrocento. The David was probably commissioned by Cosimo il Vecchio de' Medici and completed between 1435 and 1440. The statue represents the Biblical theme of the shepherd-boy David, who has just slain the giant Goliath, although some "pagan" interpretations have identified the hero as the God Mercury. Although the statue may now seem almost feminine, in its original collocation - standing on a column - it appeared in all its heroic splendour. While the first collocation of the work was presumably the Medici's Casa Vecchia, in the following years it stood at the center of the courtyard in Palazzo Medici. Since the front gate was nearly always open, in its new position the David could be admired by all the citizens, enhancing the family's prestige. Although the Medici were the de facto rulers of the city, the republican institutions still existed. Anti-tyrannical symbolism such as that of David slaying Goliath was intended to suggest that the Medici were the defenders of Florentine liberty. When in 1495, after the expulsion of Piero di Lorenzo il Magnifico, the new republican regime confiscated the David (along with other works such as the Judith and Holofernes, also by Donatello) and placed it in the courtyard of Palazzo della Signoria (Palazzo Vecchio), its symbolic-imaginary meaning took on new vigour, coming to represent not only the freedom of the Florentine Republic, but also opposition to Medicean tyranny.

After the return of the Medici and the downfall of the Republic, it was decreed that the statue should be returned to the Medici, but for political motives this was never done. Over the centuries the David was moved several times before being transferred to the newly founded Bargello Museum in 1865.

In the Hall of Michelangelo and 16th century sculpture at the Bargello Museum is the only marble bust by the great Florentine sculptor, depicting Brutus, who had slain Julius Caesar in a conspiracy. Michelangelo Buonarroti did not design a classic Renaissance portrait bust, relatively static, gazing straight ahead, but a more animated work, with the head turning forcefully to one side. Although the Brutus has no precise, distinctive characteristics, his determined gaze shows him to be an 'ideal' tyrannicide. The Brutus has a powerful political connotation. It was commissioned of Michelangelo, a sculptor openly sympathetic to republican ideals, by a client hostile to the Medici a few years after Duke Alessandro de' Medici had been assassinated by Lorenzino de' Medici in 1537. The latter, a member of the cadet branch of the family with republican leanings, was often called the Tuscan Brutus. In the mid-sixteenth century the conditions for establishing a republic in Florence were lacking, and the conspiracy had no real effect on the political situation in the city. But still today, the Brutus superbly represents the tension between republican ideals, still vitally present at the time, and the increasingly stronger Medicean Signoria.

A few years later the Brutus was acquired by the Medici family but, considering the subject it represented, it could not easily be reinterpreted in some other way on the symbolic or imaginary level. But like many other works by Michelangelo, the Brutus had not been finished, and so a base was added with a little inscription stating that the artist had stopped working on it when he realized that it might seem connected with the assassination of Duke Alessandro.