When Michelangelo’s statue of David was finished the question arose where to place it. Giuliano da San Gallo declared that “seeing the imperfections in the marble, being friable and corroded, and having been much rained upon, I do not think that it will be durable; it should therefore be put under the Loggia de’ Signori in the middle arch of the said Loggia, or under the centre of the vaulted roof so that one may walk round it; or on one side in the centre of the wall with a black niche behind it in the shape of a hood; for if it is exposed to the rain it will suffer. It ought to be covered.” Others, like Maestro Francesco, herald of the Signoria, wanted the statue to be in the open. “I have turned over in my mind,” he writes, “what my judgment suggests to me. There are two places where such a statue will do well; the first is where stands the Judith; the second is in the centre of the courtyard of the palace, in the place of the first David;[109] for the Judith is a deadly emblem and not a good thing, as we have the X for our emblem and the Lily. It is not fitting that the woman should kill the man; also she was set up under an evil constellation, for ever since we have gone from bad to worse and have lost Pisa. Then the David in the courtyard is not a perfect figure because his leg lacks symmetry. Therefore I advise putting the statue in one of these two places, but by preference where stands the Judith.” Michelangelo was of the same opinion, so his Giant, as the people called it, was set up on the ringhiera by the entrance door of the Palazzo Vecchio, and Donatello’s statue was moved to the arch of the Loggia facing the Piazza, where now stands the Rape of the Sabines. The Judith had been placed on the ringhiera in 1494 when Piero de’ Medici was driven out of Florence and his possessions, amongst them the statue, confiscated, not so much as an ornament as to warn the people to maintain their liberty and to kill tyrants, as is proved by the inscription on the pediment: _Exemplum Sal. Pub. Cives posuere. MCCCCXCV._