Life On Michelangelo Essay Research Paper Life

Life On Michelangelo Essay, Research Paper

Life of Michelangelo

Michelangelo (1475-1564), arguably 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. He spent the greater part of his adulthood in Rome, employed by

the popes; characteristically, however, he left instructions that he be buried in Florence, and

his body was placed there in a fine monument in the church of Santa Croce.

Early Life in Florence

Michelangelo’s father, a Florentine official named Ludovico Buonarroti with 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

Medicis, two of whom later became popes (Leo X and Clement VII). He also became acquainted with such

humanists as Marsilio Ficino and the poet Angelo Poliziano, who were frequent visitors. Michelangelo produced at

least two relief sculptures by the time he was 16 years old, the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of the

Stairs (both 1489-92, Casa Buonarroti, Florence), which show that he had achieved a personal style at a very early

age.

His patron Lorenzo died in 1492; two years later Michelangelo fled Florence, when the Medici were temporarily

Expelled. He settled for a time in Bologna, where in 1494 and 1495 he executed several marble statuettes for the

Arca (Shrine) di San Domenico in the Church of San Domenico.

First Roman Sojourn

Michelangelo then went to Rome, where he was able to examine many newly unearthed classical statues and

Ruins. He soon produced his first large-scale sculpture, the over-life-size Bacchus (1496-98, Bargello, Florence).

One of the few works of pagan rather than Christian subject matter made by the master, it rivaled ancient

Statuary, the highest mark of admiration in Renaissance Rome.

At about the same time, Michelangelo also did the marble Piet. (1498-1500), still in its original place in Saint

Peter’s Basilica. One of the most famous works of art, the Piet. was probably finished before Michelangelo was

25 years old and it is the only work he ever signed. The youthful Mary is shown seated majestically, holding the

dead Christ across her lap, a theme borrowed from northern European art. Instead of revealing extreme grief,

Mary is restrained, and her expression is one of resignation. In this work, Michelangelo summarizes the

sculptural innovations of his 15th-century predecessors such as Donatello, while ushering in the new

monumentality of the High Renaissance style of the 16th century.

First Return to Florence

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 terribilit., 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.

While still occupied with the David, Michelangelo was given an opportunity to demonstrate his ability as a painter

with the commission of a mural, the Battle of Cascina, destined for the Sala dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo

Vecchio, opposite Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari. Neither artist carried his assignment beyond the stage of a

cartoon, a full-scale preparatory drawing. 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

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