That must be reserved until we enter the Sistine Chapel, in order to survey the central and the crowning product of his genius in its prime.
We have every reason to believe that Michelangelo carved his David with no guidance but drawings and a small wax model about eighteen inches in height.

The inconvenience of this method, which left the sculptor to wreak his fury on the marble with mallet and chisel, can be readily conceived.

In a famous passage, disinterred by M.Mariette from a French scholar of the sixteenth century, we have this account of the fiery master's system: "I am able to affirm that I have seen Michelangelo, at the age of more than sixty years, and not the strongest for his time of life, knock off more chips from an extremely hard marble in one quarter of an hour than three young stone-cutters could have done in three or four--a thing quite incredible to one who has not seen it.

He put such impetuosity and fury into his work that I thought the whole must fly to pieces; hurling to the ground at one blow great fragments three or four inches thick, shaving the line so closely that if he had overpassed it by a hair's-breadth he ran the risk of losing all, since one cannot mend a marble afterwards or repair mistakes, as one does with figures of clay and stucco." It is said that, owing to this violent way of attacking his marble, Michelangelo sometimes bit too deep into the stone, and had to abandon a promising piece of sculpture.

This is one of the ways of accounting for his numerous unfinished statues.