Michaelangelo: Biography & Painting

Biography for Michaelangelo

Michaelangelo 1475 - 1564 - Michelangelo was one of the most inspired creators in the history of art and, with Leonardo da Vinci, the most potent force in the Italian High Renaissance. As a sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, he exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent Western art in general. A Florentine-although born March 6, 1475, in the small village of Caprese near Arezzo-Michelangelo continued to have a deep attachment to his city, its art, and its culture throughout his long life.

Early Life in Florence Michelangelo's father, a Florentine official named Ludovico Buonarrotiwith connections to the ruling Medici family, placed his 13-year-old son in the workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. After about two years, Michelangelo studied 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.

The high point of Michelangelo's early style is the gigantic (4.34 m/14.24 ft) marble David (Accademia, Florence), which he produced between 1501 and 1504, after returning to Florence. The Old Testament hero is depicted by Michelangelo as a lithe nude youth, muscular and alert, looking off into the distance as if sizing up the enemy Goliath, whom he has not yet encountered. The fiery intensity of David's facial expression is termed terribilita, a feature characteristic of many of Michelangelo's figures and of his own personality.

David, Michelangelo's most famous sculpture, became the symbol of Florence and originally was placed in the Piazza della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall. With this statue Michelangelo proved to his contemporaries that he not only surpassed all modern artists, but also the Greeks and Romans, by infusing formal beauty with powerful expressiveness and meaning.

Michelangelo created a series of nude and clothed figures in a wide variety of poses and positions that are a prelude to his next major project, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The Sistine Chapel Ceiling Michelangelo was recalled to Rome by Pope Julius II in 1505 for two commissions. The most important one was for the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Working high above the chapel floor, lying on his back on scaffolding, Michelangelo painted, between 1508 and 1512, some of the finest pictorial images of all time. On the vault of the papal chapel, he devised an intricate system of decoration that included nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, beginning with God Separating Light from Darkness and including the Creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve, and the Flood.

Michelangelo painted his own image in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. Although he was also given another painting commission, the decoration of the Pauline Chapel in the 1540s, his main energies were directed toward architecture during this phase of his life.

During his long lifetime, Michelangelo was an intimate of princes and popes, from Lorenzo de' Medici to Leo X, Clement VIII, and Pius III, as well as cardinals, painters, and poets. Neither easy to get along with nor easy to understand, he expressed his view of himself and the world even more directly in his poetry than in the other arts. Much of his verse deals with art and the hardships he underwent, or with Neoplatonic philosophy and personal relationships. The great Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto wrote succinctly of this famous artist: "Michael more than mortal, divine angel." Indeed, Michelangelo was widely awarded the epithet"divine" because of his extraordinary accomplishments. Two generations of Italian painters and sculptors were impressed by his treatment of the human figure: Raphael, Annabale Carracci, Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Titian. His dome for St. Peter's became the symbol of authority, as well as the model, for domes all over the Western world; the majority of state capitol buildings in the U.S., as well as the Capitol in Washington, D.C., are derived from it.

Current Category: Fine Art >> Most Popular Artist: Michaelangelo Boucher Francois Leonardo da Vinci Sophie Anderson Claude Monet Michaelangelo Tizian Caravaggio Pablo Picasso Vincent Van Gogh Fernando Botero Rembrandt William Bougereau Frida Kahlo Salvador Dali