By Grant Cooke

UNDER THE DOME OF FLORENCE’S GALLERIA DELL’ACCADEMIA, David’s head is turned to the left, his neck muscles taut in anticipation, yet his gaze is calm. His sling is draped over his shoulder and in his enlarged right hand nestles the stone. Goliath, the giant of the Philistines, is leading his army to the slaughter of the Israelites. It is David, the shepherd, who stands in his way.

Michelangelo Buonarroti worked for four years to pry this masterpiece from a massive but damaged block of white Carrara marble, carving the block in an explosion of creative passion and energy. For 20 hours a day he struggled to set the 17-foot, 6-ton figure free.

Michelangelo’s David is unlike any image of this Old Testament story. His David is a powerful and heroic sculpture that celebrates the human body in the Classical Greek tradition, yet evokes the self-determination that marked the Florentine Renaissance emergence from the Dark Ages.

From his writings, Michelangelo was intent on defining the moment when David realizes that his fate is in his hands. He knows that his life and his future will be defined by his battle with Goliath. If he is victorious he must leave his pasture and his flock and take on the responsibilities and politics of a king. He will become a leader who will decide the lives and deaths of others. It is the moment when action determines all that comes after, when he will live forever with the consequences.

A couple weeks ago, while Susan and I were celebrating 40 years of marriage in Florence, I stood for a long, long time in front of David. Though I easily tire of Renaissance paintings, Michelangelo’s sculptures have a powerful hold on me. Nothing in the world of art, in fact, makes such a visceral connection with me as his incredible sculptures. I can see them breathe, feel their anguish, imagine their thoughts.

David was carved around 1501-04 during a turbulent and violent time. Lorenzo de Medici, the intellectual, political and financial architect of Florence’s Renaissance, had died. Fra Savonarola, a religious zealot who came close to shutting down the Renaissance with his Bonfires of the Vanities, had been stopped. Savonarola, a master orator who rained down fire and brimstone, had been a bolt of fear to the Florentines, almost sending the city back into the Middle Ages. Finally the Florentines had enough and hung him in the Piazza della Signoria, the main square that celebrates the Republic of Florence.

When David was erected a few feet away from the gibbet on which Savonarola had last stood, the sculpture shocked and exhilarated the Florentines. Its smooth porcelain magnificence reaffirmed their commitment to the new ideas and art that were transforming their world. David’s power, strength and perfect male form reminded them that life was to be lived. Darkness was lifting, and the wonders of beauty and humanity could once more find expression.

Six hundred years later, Michelangelo’s David is still the heart and soul of Florence, as Florence is the jewel of Tuscany. Today’s Florence is a remarkable city. Much like Boston, it has thousands of students at multiple universities and colleges. It is a hub of education, finance, commerce and tourism, awash in extraordinary art and architecture. It has a dynamic mayor, Matteo Renzi, who has managed to reroute traffic and return the historic city area to a pedestrian-friendly zone. You can now stroll along narrow 14th-century streets from the Duomo, pass the Uffizi to the Ponte Vecchio, or leisurely sip an espresso at an outdoor café and not dodge a careening taxi or a whizzing Vespa.

Like the rest of Europe, modern Florence is embracing sustainability. It is actively reducing carbon emissions — most cars run on environmentally friendly diesel. Public transportation is simple and cheap and the trams are electric. Energy in hotel rooms is turned on by swipe card; energy-efficient lighting and low-flush toilets are common. Resources are preserved, yet there is robustness to life that is unmistakable.

When I was sated with art, my mind reverted to politics and economics. And in Italy, it is a mixed bag. The continuing saga of the crippling excessive debt that smothers the southern European countries of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal is ongoing.

The southern countries are trapped in a hell of their own making. Their pride won’t let them withdraw from the European Union and take on the role of second-class nations. But Germany is adamant that the only solution to the EU’s collective economic woes is enforced austerity on the debtor nations.

It is a bitter pill for the southern nations to swallow. To have their economic fates in the hands of the Germans is very disconcerting, but at least the Italians seem to be resigned to the cuts being implemented by Mario Monti, their new prime minister. Florence, with such a large number of college students and a heavy emphasis on tourism, seems unfazed. But Rome and Milan will be significantly impacted.

A big problem Monti and the reformers face is the systemic corruption that has been part of Italian politics since the fifth century, when the Popes embraced simony — selling cardinal positions — as a way to fill the treasuries for the wars of expansion.

An even bigger problem is the power of the unions. Except for Monti, no modern Italian prime minister has been able to form a government without cutting deals. Of course, the result of cutting deals with labor unions is less productivity and excessive social benefits, which got Italy overwhelmed with debt in the first place. On top of this, Monti is going to have to figure out a way to get the Italians to come clean and pay their taxes, as onerous as they are.

None of these problems is insurmountable, but it will be tough going. The German public is refusing to pay for the excesses of the southern EU countries. The Germans, the EU Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund all are insisting on cuts to resolve the problem. Without cheaper money, there can be no growth, so it looks like the whole of Europe — with the possible exception of the U.K. — is sliding into an extended period of no economic growth, or worse, a prolonged recession. The euro will continue to decline against the dollar, and Europe’s lack of growth will have a pronounced effect on China’s export economy. In fact, the only region of the world that looks like it is slowly rising from the ashes is the U.S., thanks to Ben Bernanke and President Obama, who have skillfully kept the country and the world out of depression.

On a walk across the Piazza del Duomo, I wondered if there were lessons that Florence had for Benicia. While Florence’s Renaissance is long passed, California’s is in mid-stride. While the glories of Florence were poetry, philosophy and art, California’s are in digital technology and science. Florence had Michelangelo and da Vinci; California had Steve Jobs and the kids at Google and Facebook. Where Florence had Lorenzo de Medici and the Academy of Plato, California has Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories, UC-Berkeley and Stanford, and the Sand Hill venture capitalists. Just as art defined the Florentine Renaissance, instant access to ideas and information is driving unprecedented scientific and technological discoveries in California.

The California Renaissance is merging the digital information age with the Green Revolution. Who knows — a few hundred years from now historians may write in the same awestruck tones about the California Age as they wrote about the Florence’s rebirth.

What about Benicia, our small town with such a convivial lifestyle on the edge of the San Francisco Bay? Can Florence teach us anything?

While Benicia is slow to throw off its carbon-intensive lifestyle and embrace California’s new direction, it is at a point in its development where it might be capable of surprising achievements. Benicia, like Florence, has a dynamic and progressive mayor backed by a talented city staff. It has a cluster of green businesses that is starting to flourish.

There is a group of folks who deeply care about the city’s livability and are interested in protecting the environment. Others are keenly focused on sustainable growth and development. They work tirelessly on the city’s behalf to make Benicia a more sustainable community and point us to a more natural way of urban living. The city also has subject experts, engineers and scientists who are leaders in their fields. Unfortunately, as of now many of them are too reticent to share their expertise with the community.

And Benicia has a community of writers and artists. While I’m not comparing ours to the masters who led Florence’s Renaissance, it would be nice to have them more connected and engaged. Both groups can enhance the body politic and enrich the community, yet for various reasons they seem to be content to sell their work to a mainstream audience and live almost unnoticed in town. This is a mistake. Florence has taught us that the public constantly needs contact with beauty and art or it loses the ability to distinguish it from silliness.

Or maybe it’s Benicia that fails to seek out and nurture artists. After all, Robert Arneson was a native son who attended high school football games and walked our streets. Arneson epitomized the Bay Area Funk art movement, and though he died in 1992, his work is still internationally recognized and acclaimed. I don’t think the city’s ever had an Arneson retrospective, yet his former studio and current business office is next door to First Street Café.

It would be nice to actually identify the leaders of Benicia’s art community. Do our artists talk amongst themselves? Or support each other’s work? Who are the talented glass artists who seem so successful, yet are so elusive? Who are our painters and sculptors and what ideas are driving their creativity?

The last time the community focused on anything close to art was the bike rack issue. Surely metal hoops stuck in cement are not the best artistic conversation we can manage. Maybe it’s too much to ask of a visual or kinetic artist to explain his or her self — it’s not their medium. Maybe their low profile is all there is; but it would be nice at this important juncture in Benicia’s development to get a sense of the artistic passion or creative energy among us.

Sustainability and environmental protection are valid areas for artistic expression — after all, the very first examples of fresco art were animals on cave walls. Benicia, like Florence, eventually will see sustainability, carbon emission reduction and resource conservation as worthy goals that can make a community healthier and more livable. Who knows — making First Street more pedestrian-friendly might inspire the art community to come up with some sort of displays we all can enjoy, like New York’s whimsical cows a few years back.

David’s intense stare represents an era at a defining moment in time — the moment of self-realization and determination emerging from darkness. Benicia’s time is coming — the carbon-intensive economic cycle is drawing to a close. We will be compelled to redefine our values, change our habits and respond with action. The upside is that sustainability is a future well worth embracing.

Grant Cooke is a long-time Benicia resident and CEO of Sustainable Energy Associates. He is co-author, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Woodrow Clark, of “Global Energy Innovation: Why America Must Lead,” published by Praeger Press.