If we analyze the career of Antonin Mercié in his time, the artist was a particulary early artist because he got the Premier Prix de Rome at the age of 23; and his David, in reference to first Florentine Renaissance with Donatello and Verrochio, is modelled the following year. 


Probably because of the War in 1870 and the Commune in 1871, he exhibited it at the Salon in 1872, where it becomes a posteriori the political symbol of the necessary revenge of France on Germany. From the editorial aspect, with the Florentine Singer by Paul Dubois, the Harlequin by Saint-Marceaux, the David is one of the greatest successes of sculpture edition under the Third Reppublic, if not the largest. Produced in reduction, there must be thousands and thousands of bronzes cast by Barbedienne who had signed the contract in 1874. As nudity seemed to be a problem, in one of the specific clauses of this contract, it is stated that "Mr. Mercié, committed to add in the shortest time, for the statue of David, a kind of belt or any other element, intended to hide the sexual parts.