THIS DAY IN HISTORY
MICHELANGELO BORN:
March 6, 1475
Michelangelo Buonarroti, the greatest of the Italian Renaissance
artists, is
born in the small village of Caprese on March 6, 1475. The son of a
government
administrator, he grew up in Florence, a center of the early
Renaissance
movement, and became an artist's apprentice at age 13. Demonstrating
obvious
talent, he was taken under the wing of Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of
the
Florentine republic and a great patron of the arts. For two years
beginning in
1490, he lived in the Medici palace, where he was a student of the
sculptor
Bertoldo di Giovanni and studied the Medici art collection, which
included
ancient Roman statuary.With the expulsion of the Medici family from
Florence in
1494, Michelangelo traveled to Bologna and Rome, where he was
commissioned to do
several works. His most important early work was the Pietý (1498), a
sculpture
based on a traditional type of devotional image that showed the body of
Christ
in the lap of the Virgin Mary. Demonstrating masterful technical skill,
he
extracted the two perfectly balanced figures of the Pietý from a single
block of
marble.With the success of the Pietý, the artist was commissioned to
sculpt a
monumental statue of the biblical character David for the Florence
cathedral.
The 17-foot statue, produced in the classical style, demonstrates the
artist's
exhaustive knowledge of human anatomy and form. In the work, David is
shown
watching the approach of his foe Goliath, with every muscle tensed and
a pose
suggesting impending movement. Upon the completion of David in 1504,
Michelangelo's reputation was firmly established.That year, he agreed
to paint a
mural for the Florence city hall to rest alongside one being painted by
Leonardo
da Vinci, another leading Renaissance artist and an influence on
Michelangelo.
These murals, which depicted military scenes, have not survived. In
1505, he
began work on a planned group of 12 marble apostles for the Florence
cathedral
but abandoned the project when he was commissioned to design and sculpt
a
massive tomb for Pope Julius II in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
There were to
have been 40 sculptures made for the tomb, but the pope soon ran out of
funds
for the project, and Michelangelo left Rome.In 1508, he was called back
to Rome
to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel--the chief consecrated space
in the
Vatican. Michelangelo's epic ceiling frescoes, which took several years
to
complete, are among his most memorable works. Central in a complex
system of
decoration featuring numerous figures are nine panels devoted to
biblical world
history. The most famous of these is The Creation of Adam, a painting
in which
the arms of God and Adam are outstretched toward each other.In 1512,
Michelangelo completed the Sistine Chapel ceiling and returned to his
work on
Pope Julius II's tomb. He eventually completed a total of just three
statues for
the tomb, which was eventually placed in the church of San Pietro in
Vincoli.
The most notable of the three is Moses (1513-15), a majestic statue
made from a
block of marble regarded as unmalleable by other sculptors. In Moses,
as in
David, Michelangelo infused the stone with a powerful sense of tension
and
movement.Having revolutionized European sculpture and painting,
Michelangelo
turned to architecture in the latter half of his life. His first major
architectural achievement was the Medici chapel in the Church of San
Lorenzo in
Florence, built to house the tombs of the two young Medici family heirs
who had
recently died. The chapel, which he worked on until 1534, featured many
innovative architectural forms based on classical models. The
Laurentian
Library, which he built as an annex to the same church, is notable for
its
stair-hall, known as the ricetto, which is regarded as the first
instance of
mannerism as an architectural style. Mannerism, a successor to the
Renaissance
artistic movement, subverted harmonious classical forms in favor of
expressiveness.In 1534, Michelangelo left Florence for the last time
and
traveled to Rome, where he would work and live for the rest of his
life. That
year saw his painting of the The Last Judgment on a wall above the
altar in the
Sistine Chapel for Pope Paul III. The massive painting depicts Christ's
damnation of sinners and blessing of the virtuous, and is regarded as a
masterpiece of early mannerism. During the last three decades of his
life,
Michelangelo lent his talents to the design of numerous monuments and
buildings
for Rome, which the pope and city leaders were determined to restore to
the
grandeur of its ancient past. The Capitoline Square and the dome of St.
Peter's,
designed by Michelangelo but not completed in his lifetime, remain two
of Rome's
most famous visual landmarks.Michelangelo worked until his death in
1564 at the
age of 88. In addition to his major artistic works, he produced
numerous other
sculptures, frescoes, architectural designs, and drawings, many of
which are
unfinished and some of which are lost. He was also an accomplished
poet, and
some 300 of his poems are preserved. In his lifetime, he was celebrated
as
Europe's greatest living artist, and today he is held up as one of the
greatest
artists of all time, as exalted in the visual arts as William
Shakespeare is in
literature or Ludwig van Beethoven is in music.
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