See Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni Paintings.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (March 6, 1475 – February
18, 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter,
sculptor, architect, poet and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the
arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order
that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal
Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.
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 and the 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: the
scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of
the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Later in life he designed the dome of St. Peter's
Basilica in the same city and revolutionised classical architecture with his use
of the giant order of pilasters.
In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western
artist whose biography was published while he was alive.[2] Two biographies were
published of him during his lifetime; One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed
that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the
Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for
centuries. In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine
one").[3] 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.
Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475[a] in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany.[4]
His family had for several generations been small-scale bankers in Florence but
his father, Lodovico di Leonardo di Buonarroti di Simoni, failed to maintain its
status, holding to occasional government jobs.[2] At the time of Michelangelo's
birth he was Judicial administrator of small-town Caprese and local
administrator of Chiusi. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato
di Siena.[5] The Buonarroti claimed to descend from Countess Mathilde of Canossa;
this claim was probably false, but Michelangelo himself believed it.[6] However,
several months after Michelangelo's birth the family returned to to Florence
where Michelangelo was raised. At later times, during the prolonged illness and
after the death of his mother, Michelangelo 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.[5] Michelangelo once said to the biographer of artists Giorgio
Vasari, "If there is some good in me, it is because I was born in the subtle
atmosphere of your country of Arezzo. Along with the milk of my nurse I received
the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures."
Michelangelo's father sent him to study grammar with the humanist Francesco da
Urbino in Florence as a young boy.The young artist, however, showed no interest
in school, preferring instead to copy paintings from churches and seek the
company of painters. Michelangelo was apprenticed in painting with Domenico
Ghirlandaio[1] and in sculpture with Bertoldo di Giovanni. Michelangelo's father
managed to persuade Ghirlandaio to pay the fourteen year old artist, which was
highly unusual at the time.[8] When in 1489 Florence's ruler Lorenzo de' Medici
asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and
Francesco Granacci.[9] 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.[10]
Michelangelo finished Madonna of the Steps (1490–1492) and Battle of the
Centaurs (1491–1492). The latter was based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and
was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici.[11]
other artist: Raphael Paintings Frida Kahlo Paintings Douglas Hoffman Paintings Hessam Abrishami Paintings