Michelangelo: Life & Masterworks of a Renaissance Man
Born in 1475 Caprese Italy, during his youth, Michelangelo cared little about school, but instead spent hours in nearby churches, watching painters at work while drawing precise replicas of what he saw.
Michelangelo’s Artistic Potential Realized
Realizing his son’s immense talent as a painter, Michelangelo began his apprenticeship to Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio at just thirteen years of age, before studying classical sculpture under the watchful eye of Florentine ruler Lorenzo de Medici of the powerful Medici family, giving young Michelangelo remarkable access to the social elite of Florence, not to mention poets, scholars and humanists of the day.
By the tender age of 16, Michelangelo had already produced two magnificent and still-surviving relief sculptures, the Battle of the Centaurs and Madonna Seated on a Step.
After living and working in Bologna for a time, Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1495, where he produced his now famous Cupid sculpture, before moving to Rome at the behest of Cardinal Riario of San Giogio, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
Known for his contentious personality, quick temper and bouts of melancholy, Michelangelo’s constant push for artistic perfection oftentimes found him at odds with his employers, yet his obvious talents made him uncommonly famous during his lifetime.
Michelangelo’s Masterworks
Of his surviving works, his most notable sculptures include the Pieto, his statue of David and his paintings that adorn the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City.
Known most notably for his sculptures and paintings, Michelangelo wrote volumes of poems and sonnets, and while he never married, he was devoted to a pious and noble widow named Vittoria Colonna, sending her more than 300 poems and sonnets before her death in 1547.
Michelangelo was also an accomplished architect, where he designed the Medici Chapel in Florence, the Laurentian Library housing the Medici family book collection, as well as chief architect for the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica. He passed away on February 18th, 1564, just weeks before his 89th birthday, making the life and works of Michelangelo, one of the high-water talents of the Italian Renaissance.