The study of Michelangelo’s David from an accountability perspective: prodromes of dialogic accounting in the early Florentine Renaissance

This article aims to contribute to the accounting history literature by investigating the realization and the placement of the Michelangelo’s David from an accountability perspective. More specifically, the study attempts to answer an exploratory research question on whether and how prodromes of dialogic accounting were concretely adopted by a quasi-public institution - the Opera del Duomo in Florence - during the period of the David realization (1501-1504). Through the analysis of primary and secondary sources, this study wants to shed light on a complex, rare and effective early Renaissance accountability system based on consensus building and dialogic accounting, that is a form of critical accounting that allows interested constituencies with divergent socio-political perspectives to express different views on what needs to be accounted for, how these phenomena are accounted for, and on whose terms. Our contribution to the accounting history literature is twofold. First, our study adds an early Renaissance analysis to the existing literature on the deliberative, Habermas-inspired approach to dialogic accounting. Second, the particular historical period and context of this study and its focus on an original institution that operated as a quasi-public, hybrid organization strictly linked with the Republic of Florence constitutes a new strand of research for accounting historians.