Sculptor, painter, and poet, born in Caprese, NC Italy. As a boy he was placed in the care of a stonemason at Settignano, and in 1488 spent three years in Florence with Ghirlandaio. He received the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, and after his death (1492) spent three years in Bologna. His Cupid was bought by Cardinal San Giorgio, who summoned him to Rome (1496), where he stayed for four years. He then returned to Florence, where he sculpted the marble David. Though he did not wholly neglect painting, his genius was essentially plastic, and he was far more interested in form than in colour. In 1503 Julius II summoned him back to Rome, where he was commissioned to design the pope's tomb; but interruptions and quarrels left him able to complete only a fragment. Instead, he was ordered to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with paintings, which he did with reluctance (150812). In 1528 danger to Florence forced him to the science of fortification, and when the city was besieged (1529) he was foremost in its defence. His last pictorial achievement was The Last Judgement (1537), and the next year he was appointed architect of St Peter's, to which he devoted himself until his death.
| Michelangelo | |
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Chalk portrait of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra |
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| Birth name | Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni |
| Born |
March 6, 1475 near Arezzo, in Caprese, Tuscany |
| Died |
February 18, 1564 |
| Field | sculpture, painting, architecture and poetry |
| Training | Apprentice to Domenico Ghirlandaio |
| Movement | High Renaissance |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect and poet.
Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious; Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential fresco paintings in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
Uniquely for a Renaissance artist, two biographies were published of Michelangelo during his own lifetime. One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance, Mannerism.
Early life
Michelangelo was born in 1475 near Arezzo, in Caprese, Tuscany. However, Michelangelo was raised in Florence and later, during the prolonged illness and after the death of his birth mother, lived with a stonecutter and his wife and family in the town of Settignano where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. Michelangelo once said to the biographer of artists Giorgio Vasari, "What little good I have within me came from the pure air of your native Arezzo and the chisels and hammers I sucked from my mother's milk."
Against his father's wishes (in fact to persuade him to take up a more honorable profession, his father would beat him), after a period of grammatics studies with the humanist Francesco d'Urbino Michelangelo chose to continue his apprenticeship in painting with Domenico Ghirlandaio and in sculpture with Bertoldo di Giovanni. Amazingly enough, Michelangelo's father was able to get Ghirlandaio to pay the young artist, which was unheard of at the time. Impressed, Domenico recommended him to the ruler of the city, Lorenzo de' Medici, and Michelangelo left his workshop in 1489. From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended Lorenzo's school and was influenced by many prominent people who modified and expanded his ideas on art, following the dominant Platonic view of that age, and even his feelings about sexuality. It was during this period that Michelangelo met literary personalities like Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino.
In this period Michelangelo finished Madonna of the Steps (1490–1492) and Battle of the Centaurs (1491–1492). After the death of Lorenzo on April 8, 1492, for whom Michelangelo had become a kind of son, Michelangelo quit the Medici court. But that year the Medici were expelled from Florence after the Savonarola rise, and Michelangelo also left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna. In this room there are charcoal sketches still on the walls of various images that Michelangelo drew from his memory.
Here he was commissioned to finish the carving of the last small figures of the tomb and shrine of St. Dominic, in the church with the same name.
He was again in his city between the end of 1495 and the June of 1496: if Leonardo considered Savonarola a fanatic and left the city, Michelangelo was touched by the friar's preaching, by the associated moral severity and by the hope of renovation of the Roman Church. In that year a marble Cupid by Michelangelo was treacherously sold to Cardinal Raffaele Riario as an ancient piece: the prelate found out that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome, where he arrived on June 26, 1496. On July 4 Michelangelo started to carve an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god, Bacchus, commissioned by the banker Jacopo Galli for his garden.
Subsequently, in November of 1497, the French ambassador in the Holy See commissioned one of his most famous works, the Pietà. The contemporary opinion about this work — "a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture" — was summarised by Vasari: "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.see photo"
The contract was stipulated in the August of the following year. Though he devoted himself only to sculpture, during his first stay in Rome Michelangelo never stopped his daily practice of drawing. In Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto: here, according to the legends, he fell in love (probably a Platonic love) with Vittoria Colonna, marquise of Pescara and poet. Today a modern reconstruction of Michelangelo's house can be seen on the Gianicolo hill.
Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499–1501. Michelangelo replied to the commissioning by completing arguably his most famous work, David in 1504.
Also during this period, Michelangelo painted the Holy Family and St John, also known as the Doni Tondo or the Holy Family of the Tribune: it was commissioned for the marriage of Angelo Doni and Maddalena Strozzi and in the 17th Century hung in the room known as the Tribune in the Uffizi.
Under Pope Julius II in Rome: the Sistine Chapel ceiling
Michelangelo was invited back to the great city of Rome in 1503 by the newly appointed Pope Julius II and was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. However, under the patronage of Julius II, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks; due to such interruptions, Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years without ever finishing it. According to Michelangelo's own account, reproduced in contemporary biographies, Bramante and Raphael convinced the Pope to commission Michelangelo in a medium not familiar to the artist, in order that he might be diverted from his preference for sculpture into fresco painting, and thus suffer from unfavourable comparisons with his rival Raphael.
Michelangelo was originally employed to paint the 12 Apostles, but protested for a different scheme, and eventually completed the work with over 300 Biblical figures in a composition which has attracted many different interpretations. On the highest section Michelangelo painted nine episodes from the Book of Genesis.
Under Medici Popes in Florence
In 1513 Pope Julius II died and his successor Pope Leo X, a Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the façade of the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly.
Apparently not the least embarrassed by this turnabout, the Medici later came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the basilica of San Lorenzo. Though still incomplete, it is the best example we have of the integration of the artist's sculptural and architectural vision, since Michelangelo created both the major sculptures as well as the interior plan. He was also tutored and was first apprenticed to Ghirlandaio
In 1527, the Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. Completely out of sympathy with the repressive reign of the ducal Medici, Michelangelo left Florence for good in the mid-1530s, leaving assistants to complete the Medici chapel.
Last works in Rome
The fresco of The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by Pope Paul III, and Michelangelo labored on the project from 1534 to October 1541.
Once completed, the depictions of nakedness in the papal chapel was considered obscene and sacrilegeous, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. After Michelangelo's death, it was decided to obscure the genitals ("Pictura in Cappella Ap.ca coopriantur"). So Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commimssioned to cover with sort of perizomas (briefs) the genitals, leaving unaltered the complex of bodies (see details).
Censorship always followed Michelangelo, once described as "inventor delle porcherie" ("inventor of obscenities", in the original Italian language referring to "pork things"). The infamous "fig-leaf campaign" of the Counter-Reformation, aiming to cover all representations of human genitals in paintings and sculptures, started with Michelangelo's works.
In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, and designed its dome. As St. Peter's was progressing there was concern that Michelangelo would pass away before the dome was finished.
Michelangelo the architect
The Capitoline Square, designed by Michelangelo during the same period, was located on Rome's Capitoline Hill.
Michelangelo's David
Laurentian Library
Around 1530 Michelangelo designed the Laurentian Library in Florence, attached to the church of San Lorenzo.
Medici Chapel
Michelangelo designed the Medici Chapel.
Palazzo Farnese
Work on the Palazzo Farnese was begun by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who was commissioned by Pope Paul III Farnese. Michelangelo took over the works in 1546 after the death of Sangallo. His successor, Pope Paul III, appointed Michelangelo as chief architect following the death of Antonio de Sangallo in 1546. Michelangelo actually razed some sections of the church designed by Sangallo in keeping with the original design by St Peter's first architect, Donato Bramante (1444–1514). However the only elements built according to Michelangelo's designs are sections of the rear façade and the dome.
Michelangelo the man
Michelangelo, who was often arrogant with others and constantly dissatisfied with himself, saw art as originating from inner inspiration and from culture. In contradiction to the ideas of his rival, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo saw nature as an enemy that had to be overcome. For Michelangelo, the job of the sculptor was to free the forms that were already inside the stone.
Several anecdotes reveal that Michelangelo's skill, especially in sculpture, was greatly admired in his own time. Another better-known anecdote claims that when finishing the Moses (San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome), Michelangelo violently hit the knee of the statue with a hammer, shouting, "Why don't you speak to me?"
Relationships
Fundamental to Michelangelo's art is his love of male beauty which attracted him both aesthetically and emotionally. Such feelings caused him great anguish, and he expressed the struggle between platonic ideals and carnal desire in his sculpture, drawing and his poetry, too, for among his other accomplishments Michelangelo was the great Italian lyric poet of the [16th century]. Febbo di Poggio, in 1532, peddled his charms — in answer to Michelangelo's love poem he asks for money. 1509–1587), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo met him in 1532, at the age of 57. Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours. Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo till his death.
Michelangelo dedicated to him over three hundred sonnets and madrigals, constituting the largest sequence of poems composed by him.
— (Michael Sullivan, translation)The homoeroticism of Michelangelo's poetry was obscured when his grand nephew, Michelangelo the Younger, published an edition of the poetry in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed.
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