Photos

PP note:
I preferred sepia, while still keeping the contrast of the original post. I also tried a dramatic crop, point of the kneeling boy's spear leaning to the right top corner, making the angle between the spear and the stairs more obvious.

Cultural note:
The National Museum of Bargello has its setting in one of the oldest buildings in Florence and one of the most beautiful in Italy, which was begun in 1255. Initially the headquarters of the Capitano del Popolo and later of the Podestà, in the sixteenth century it became the residence of the Bargello or head of police spies from which it took its name. Throughout the eighteenth century it functioned as a prison. It has been the setting of many of the most important events of civic life such as the meeting place of the Council of the Hundred in which Dante took part. There have been sieges, fires and executions, the most famous perhaps being that of Baroncelli, involved in the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici in which Leonardo also participated. Despite a series of alterations and additions which altered the original plan during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the palace preserved its pleasant severity, best seen in the beautiful courtyard, the balcony and the large hall on the first floor.

The building's use as a National Museum began in the mid-nineteenth century, and nowadays is the setting mainly for works of sculpture and many examples of the decorative arts. What the Uffizi offers in painting, the Bargello offers in sculpture and its courtyard and interiors contain some of the masterpieces of the Tuscan Renaissance. In the large fourteenth century hall on the first floor are found some of the finest works of Donatello (1386-1466) such as the marble Youthful David, the St. George from its niche in Orsanmichele and the later, and more ambiguous, David in bronze. All are works in which the linear and decorative tendencies of late Gothic sculpture can be seen giving way to more solid and human ideals, full of civic and moral dignity.