Michelangelo

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, 06/03/1475-18/02/1564. Michelangelo was born near Arezzo in Caprese, Tuscany in 1475. Michelangelo was a Renaissance sculptor, architect, painter, and poet. Michelangelo was raised in Florence and later lived with a sculptor and his wife 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 good I have comes from the pure air of your native Arezzo, and also because I sucked in chisels and hammers with my mother's milk."

Michelangelo attended the school of Lorenzo de'Medici for two years in 1490. It was here that he 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 time that Michelangelo met literary personalities like Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and Angelo Poliziano. The Battle of the Centaurs was based on a theme that Poliziano had suggested and was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici.

Michelangelo is famous for many creations including the fresco ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgment over the altar. The Martyrdom of St Peter and The Conversion of St Paul in the Vatican's Cappella Paolina. Michelangelo sculptures include David and the Pietà, as well as the Doni Virgin, Bacchus, Moses, Rachel, Leah, and members of the Medici family. Michelangelo also designed the dome of St Peters Basilica.

In contradiction to the ideas of his rival, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo saw nature as an enemy that had to be overcome. Therefore the figures that he would create would be forceful in movement. Michelangelo believed that his job as a sculptor was to free the forms which were already inside the stone. This is most apparent in his unfinished statuary figures. To many people they appear to be struggling to free themselves from the stone. Michelangelo also instilled into his figures a sense of moral cause for action. A good example of this can be seen in the facial expression of his most famous work, the marble statue of David. Arguably second in Michelangelo work is the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel which is a synthesis of architecture, sculpture & painting.