Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni - Michelangelo
Italian Painter 1475-1564
 Michelangelo
is one of the greatest artists of all time, a man whose name has
become synonymous with the word "masterpiece". As an artist he was
unmatched, the creator of works of sublime beauty that express the
full breadth of the human condition. Yet in a world where art
flourished only with patronage, Michelangelo was caught between the
conflicting powers and whims of the Medici family in Florence, and
the Papacy in Rome. Unlike many artists of his time, his genius was
recognized, but at what cost to his personal life? As an Italian
sculptor, painter, architect and poet, Michelangelo was one of the
founders of the High Renaissance
and, in his later years, one of the principal exponents of
Mannerism.Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà (shown here) and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born at Caprese, a village in Florentine territory, where his father, named Ludovico Buonarroti Simoni was the resident magistrate. A few weeks after Michelangelo's birth the family returned to Florence, and, in 1488, after overcoming parental opposition he was formally apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio for a term of three years. |
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After about one year of learning the art of fresco, Michelangelo went on
to study at the sculpture school in the Medici gardens and shortly
thereafter was invited into the
 household of Lorenzo de' Medici, the
Magnificent. There he had an opportunity to converse with the
younger Medici, two of whom later became popes. He also became acquainted with such humanists as Marsilo
Ficino and the poet Angelo Poliziano. During the years he spent in the Garden of San Marco, Michelangelo began to study human anatomy. Michelangelo produced at least two relief sculptures by the time he was 16 years old, the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of the Stairs, which show that he had achieved a personal style at a precocious age. After the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and under Savonarola's influence, the Florentines were divided into several rival factions. Michelangelo went to Rome, where he was able to examine many newly unearthed classical statues and ruins. He soon produced his first large-scale sculpture, the over-life-size Bacchus(shown here). One of the few works of pagan rather than Christian subject matter made by the master, it rivaled ancient statuary, the highest mark of admiration in Renaissance Rome. On August 4th, 1501, after several years of political confusion, a republic was once again proclaimed in Florence. Twelve days after the proclamation of the republic, the Arte della Lana or Wool Guild, the wealthy corporation responsible for the maintenance and ornamentation of the Cathedral, commissioned him to sculpt a statue of David. Michelangelo chose to represent David as an athletic, manly character, very concentrated and ready to fight. The extreme tension is evident in his worried look and in his right hand, holding a stone. The meaning of this David becomes fully clear if we take into consideration the historical circumstances of its creation. Michelangelo was devoted to the Republic, and wanted each citizen to become aware of his responsibilities and commit himself to accomplishing his duty. |
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Michelangelo's temper was proverbial. The enmity between him and
Leonardo da Vinci is
famous. There were over twenty years of difference in age between
them and Leonardo, on his return to Florence at the age of fifty,
was confident of regaining the position due to him in the artistic
world of the city. He was in fact received with great honors, but
had to reckon with the fame of Michelangelo, the rising star whose
name was on everyone's lips. In May 1508, Michelangelo began to make the preparatory designs for the Sistine ceiling. The project was physically and emotionally torturous for Michelangelo. Michelangelo recounts its effect on him with these words: "After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-sized figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognize the old man I had become." The Last Judgment, which Michelangelo finished in 1541 was the largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts Judgment Day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts into motion the inevitable separation, with the saved ascending on the left side of the painting and the damned descending on the right into a Dantesque hell. As was his custom, Michelangelo portrayed all the figures nude, but prudish draperies were added by another artist a decade later, as the cultural climate became more conservative. Michelangelo painted his own image in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, and designed its dome. On December 7, 2007, Michelangelo's red chalk sketch for the dome of St Peter's Basilica, his last before his 1564 death, was discovered in the Vatican archives. It is extremely rare, since he destroyed his designs later in life. The sketch is a partial plan for one of the radial columns of the cupola drum of Saint Peter's. |