Michelangelo

Life and legacy

Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475, in the small Tuscan town of Caprese, where his father served as a local magistrate. The family soon returned to Florence, and the young Michelangelo was apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio at the age of thirteen. He quickly surpassed his teacher and attracted the attention of Lorenzo de' Medici, who invited the teenager to study the classical sculptures in the Medici garden and live as a member of his household. There, Michelangelo absorbed the Neoplatonic philosophy that would infuse his art with a profound sense of the spiritual struggle between matter and spirit.

Michelangelo's first masterpiece, the "Pieta" (1498-1499), carved when he was just twenty-four, established his reputation as the greatest sculptor since antiquity. The statue of "David" (1501-1504), a colossal figure carved from a single block of marble that other sculptors had abandoned as unworkable, became the symbol of the Florentine Republic and one of the most recognized works of art ever created. These works display Michelangelo's extraordinary understanding of human anatomy and his ability to liberate monumental forms from raw stone.

In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel - a project the sculptor accepted reluctantly, protesting that painting was not his craft. Over four grueling years (1508-1512), working largely alone on high scaffolding, he created a vast fresco cycle depicting the Creation, the Fall of Man, and the story of Noah, populated by over three hundred figures of astonishing physical power and emotional depth. The centerpiece, "The Creation of Adam," with its near-touching fingers of God and man, has become the single most reproduced religious image in Western art. Michelangelo returned to the Sistine Chapel decades later to paint "The Last Judgment" (1536-1541) on the altar wall.

Michelangelo's final decades were devoted primarily to architecture. In 1546, at the age of seventy-one, he was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the most important building project in Christendom. He redesigned the building around a massive central dome that would become the model for domed structures around the world, including the United States Capitol. He also designed the Laurentian Library in Florence and the Capitoline Hill piazza in Rome.

Michelangelo died in Rome on February 18, 1564, at the age of eighty-eight, still working on his final sculpture, the Rondanini Pieta. His body was smuggled back to Florence, where it was interred in the Basilica of Santa Croce. He was the first artist to have a biography published during his lifetime (by Giorgio Vasari in 1550, and by his assistant Ascanio Condivi in 1553), and his career spanning seven decades defined the arc of Renaissance art from the serene classicism of the fifteenth century to the emotional intensity of Mannerism.

Key accomplishments

• Sculpted the "David" (1501-1504), one of the most famous sculptures in history
• Painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-1512), a supreme achievement of Western art
• Carved the "Pieta" (1498-1499), a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture
• Designed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome
• Painted "The Last Judgment" (1536-1541) on the Sistine Chapel altar wall

Quotes

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Widely attributed; exact source uncertain

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.

Widely attributed; exact source uncertain

Related figures