Michelangelo

Michelangelo
Portrait of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra
Birth name	Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Born	(1475-03-06)6 March 1475 Caprese near Arezzo, Republic of Florence (present-day Tuscany, Italy)
Died	18 February 1564(1564-02-18) (aged 88) Rome, Papal States (present-day Italy)
Field	Sculpture, painting, architecture, and poetry
Movement	High Renaissance
Works	David Pietà The Last Judgment Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo (Italian pronunciation: [mikeˈlandʒelo]), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.^[1] 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 fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time.^[1] A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence.^[1] His 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 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. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At the age of 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.

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^[4] Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.

Life

Early life, 1475-88

Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475^[a] in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany.^[5] (Today, Caprese is known as Caprese Michelangelo). For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence, the bank had failed and his father, Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, briefly took a government post in Caprese, where Michelangelo was born.^[2] At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the Judicial administrator of the small town of Caprese and local administrator of Chiusi. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena.^[6] The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa; this claim remains unproven, but Michelangelo himself believed it.^[7] Several months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where Michelangelo was raised. At later times, during his mother's prolonged illness and after her death in 1481, when he was just six years old, 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.^[6] Giorgio Vasari quotes Michelangelo:

"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."^[5]

Apprenticeships, 1488-92

As a young boy Michelangelo was sent to Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino.^[5][8][b] The young artist, however, showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of painters.^[8]

The city of Florence was at that time the greatest centre of the arts and learning in Italy.^[9] Art was sponsored by the Signoria (the town council), by the merchant guilds and by wealthy patrons such as the Medici and their banking associates.^[10] The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence.^[9] In the early 1400s, the architect Brunelleschi has studied the remains of Classical buildings in Rome and created two churches, San Lorenzo's and Santo Spiritu, which embodied the Classical precepts.^[11] The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for fifty years to create the bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as "The Gates of Paradise".^[12] The exterior niches of the Church of Or' San Michele contained a gallery of works by the greatest sculptors of Florence, Donatello, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco.^[10] The interiors of the older churches were covered with frescos, mostly in the Late Medieval style, but also in the Early Renaissance style, begun by Giotto and continued by Massaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, both of whose works Michelangelo studied and copied in drawings.^[13] During Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican, in order to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master of the technique of fresco painting, of perspective, figure drawing and portraiture. He had the largest workshop in Florence, at that period.^[10]

In 1488, at thirteen, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio.^[14] When he was only fourteen, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay his apprentice as an artist, which was highly unusual at the time.^[15] When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, de facto ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.^[16] From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Humanist academy which the Medici had founded along Neo Platonic lines. At the academy, both Michelangelo's outlook and his art were subject to the influence of many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano.^[17] At this time, Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs Madonna of the Steps (1490–1492) and Battle of the Centaurs (1491–1492).^[13] The latter was based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici.^[18] Michelangelo worked for a time with the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni. When he was seventeen, another pupil, Pietro Torrigiano, struck him on the nose, causing the disfigurement which is conspicuous in all the portraits of Michelangelo.^[19]

Bologna, Florence and Rome, 1492-99

Lorenzo de' Medici's death on 8 April 1492 brought a reversal of Michelangelo's circumstances.^[20] Michelangelo left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he carved a polychrome wooden Crucifix (1493), as a gift to the prior of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, which had permitted him some studies of anatomy on the corpses of the church's hospital.^[21] Between 1493 and 1494 he bought a block of marble, and carved a larger than life statue of Hercules, which was sent to France and subsequently disappeared sometime circa 18th century.^[18][c] On 20 January 1494, after heavy snowfalls, Lorenzo's heir, Piero de Medici, commissioned a snow statue, and Michelangelo again entered the court of the Medici.

In the same year, the Medici were expelled from Florence as the result of the rise of Savonarola. Michelangelo left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna.^[20] In Bologna, he was commissioned to carve several of the last small figures for the completion of the Shrine of St. Dominic, in the church dedicated to that saint. At this time Michelangelo studied the robust reliefs carved by Jacopo della Quercia around main portal of the Basilica of St Petronius, including the panel of The Creation of Eve the composition of which was to reappear on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.^[22] Towards the end of 1494, the political situation in Florence was calmer. The city, previously under threat from the French, was no longer in danger as Charles VIII had suffered defeats. Michelangelo returned to Florence but received no commissions from the new city government under Savonarola. He returned to the employment of the Medici.^[23] During the half year he spent in Florence, he worked on two small statues, a child St. John the Baptist and a sleeping Cupid. According to Condivi, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, for whom Michelangelo had sculpted St. John the Baptist, asked that Michelangelo "fix it so that it looked as if it had been buried" so he could "send it to Rome...pass [it off as] an ancient work and … sell it much better." Both Lorenzo and Michelangelo were unwittingly cheated out of the real value of the piece by a middleman. Cardinal Raffaele Riario, to whom Lorenzo had sold it, discovered that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome.^{[24] [d]} This apparent success in selling his sculpture abroad as well as the conservative Florentine situation may have encouraged Michelangelo to accept the prelate's invitation.^[23]

Michelangelo arrived in Rome 25 June 1496^[25] at the age of 21. On 4 July of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Raffaele Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god Bacchus. Upon completion, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden.

In November 1497, the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal Jean de Bilhères-Lagraulas, commissioned him to carve a Pietà, a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus. The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of Medieval Northern Europe and would have been very familiar to the Cardinal.^[26] The contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its completion.^[26] It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture, "a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture". Contemporary opinion was summarized by Vasari: "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh." ^[27] It is now located in St Peter's Basilica.

Florence, 1499-1505

Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499. The republic was changing after the fall of anti-Renaissance Priest and leader of Florence, Girolamo Savonarola, (executed in 1498) and the rise of the gonfaloniere Piero Soderini. He was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom, to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral.^[28] Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the Statue of David, in 1504. The masterwork definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. A team of consultants, including Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, was called together to decide upon its placement, ultimately the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in the Academia while a replica occupies its place in the square.^[29]

With the completion of the David came another commission. In early 1504 Leonardo da Vinci had been commissioned in the council chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio depicting the Battle of Angiari between the forces of Florence and Milan in 1434. Michelangelo was then commissioned to paint the Battle of Cascina. The two paintings are very different, Leonardo's depicting soldiers fighting on horseback, and Michelangelo's showing soldiers being ambushed as they bathe in the river. Neither work was completed and both were lost when the chamber was refurbished. Both works were much admired and copies remain of them, Leonardo's work having been copied by Rubens and Michelangelo's by Bastiano da Sangallo.^[30]

Also during this period, Michelangelo was commissioned by Angelo Doni to paint a "Holy Family" as a present for his wife, Maddalena Strozzi. It is known as the Doni Tondo and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in its original magnificent frame which Michelangelo may have designed.^[31][32] He also may have painted the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, known as the Manchester Madonna and now in the National Gallery, London, United Kingdom.^[33]

Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1505-12

In 1505, Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II. He was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years.^[34]

Under the patronage of the Pope, Michelangelo experienced constant interruptions to his work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks. Although Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years, it was never finished to his satisfaction.^[34] It is located in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is most famous for the central figure of Moses, completed in 1516.^[35] Of the other statues intended for the tomb, two known as the Heroic Captive and the Dying Captive, are now in the Louvre.^[34]

During the same period, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508–1512).^[35] According to Condivi's account, Bramante, who was working on the building of St Peter's Basilica, resented Michelangelo's commission for the Pope's tomb and convinced the Pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order that he might fail at the task.^[36]

Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pendentives that supported the ceiling, and cover the central part of the ceiling with ornament.^[37] Michelangelo persuaded Pope Julius to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel which represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.^[37]

The composition stretches over 500 square metres of ceiling,^[38] and contains over 300 figures.^[37] At its centre are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's Creation of the Earth; God's Creation of Humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of Humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of the Jesus. They are seven prophets of Israel and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world.^[37] Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are The Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the Prophet Jeremiah and the Cumaean Sibyl.

Florence under Medici popes, 1513-early 1534

In 1513, Pope Julius II died and was succeeded by Pope Leo X, the second son of Lorenzo dei Medici.^[35] Pope Leo commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the façade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. He agreed reluctantly and spent three years creating drawings and models for the façade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project. In 1520 the work was abruptly cancelled by his financially strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a façade to this day.^[39]

In 1520 the Medici came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo.^[35] Fortunately for posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realized. Michelangelo used his own discretion to create its composition of the Medici Chapel. It houses the large tombs of two of the younger members of the Medici family, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, his nephew, but it also serves to commemorate their more famous predecessors, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano who are buried nearby. The tombs display statues of the two Medici and allegorical figures representing Night and Day, and Dusk and Dawn. The chapel also contains Michelangelo's Medici Madonna.^[40] In 1976 a concealed corridor was discovered with drawings on the walls that related to the chapel itself.^[41][42]

Pope Leo X died in 1521, to be succeeded briefly by the austere Adrian VI, then his cousin Giulio Medici as Pope Clement VII.^[43] In 1524 Michelangelo received an architectural commission from the Medici pope for the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo's Church.^[35] He designed both the interior of the library itself and its vestibule, a building which utilises architectural forms with such dynamic effect that it is seen as the forerunner of Baroque architecture. It was left to assistants to interpret his plans and carry out instruction. The library was not opened until 1571 and the vestibule remained incomplete until 1904.^[44]

In 1527, the Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530 and the Medici were restored to power.^[35] Michelangelo fell out of favour with the young Alessandro Medici who had been installed as the first Duke of Florence, and fearing for his life, he fled to Rome, leaving assistants to complete the Medici chapel and the Laurentian Library. Despite Michelangelo's support of the republic and resistance to the Medici rule, he was welcomed by Pope Clement who reinstated an allowance that he had previously made the artist and made a new contract with him over the tomb of Pope Julius.^[45]

Rome, 1534-46

In Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. It was at this time that he met the poet, Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara, who was to become one of his closest friends until her death in 1547.^[46]

Shortly before his death in 1534 Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of The Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. His successor, Paul III was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project. Michelangelo labored on the project from 1534 to October 1541.^[35] The fresco depicts the Second Coming of Christ and his Judgement of the souls. Michelangelo ignored the usual artistic conventions in portraying Jesus, and showed him a massive, muscular figure, youthful, beardless and naked.^[47] He is surrounded by saints, among which Saint Bartholomew holds a drooping flayed skin, bearing the likeness of Michelangelo. The dead rise from their graves, to be consigned either to Heaven or to Hell.^[47]

Once completed, the depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary naked was considered sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. At the Council of Trent, shortly before Michelangelo's death in 1564, it was decided to obscure the genitals and Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to make the alterations.^[48] An uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.^[49]

Michelangelo worked on a number of architectural projects at this time. They included a design for the Capitoline Hill with its trapezoid piazza displaying the ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius. He designed the upper floor of the Palazzo Farnese, and the interior of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in which he transformed the vaulted interior of an Ancient Roman bathhouse. Other architectural works include San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Sforza Chapel (Capella Sforza) in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and the Porta Pia.^[50]

St Peter's Basilica, 1546-64

While still working on the Last Judgement, Michelangelo received yet another commission for the Vatican. This was for the painting of two large frescos in the Cappella Paolina depicting significant events in the lives of the two most important saints of Rome, the Conversion of Saint Paul and the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Like the Last Judgement, these two works are complex compositions containing a great number of figures.^[51] They were completed in 1550. In the same year, Giorgio Vasari published his Vita, including a biography of Michelangelo.^[52]

In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome.^[35] The process of replacing the Constantinian basilica of the 4th century had been underway for fifty years and in 1506 foundations had been laid to the plans of Bramante. Successive architects had worked on it, but little progress had been made. Michelangelo was persuaded to take over the project. He returned to the concepts of Bramante, and developed his ideas for a centrally planned church, strengthening the structure both physically and visually.^[53] The dome, not completed until after his death, has been called by Banister Fletcher, "the greatest creation of the Renaissance".^[54]

As construction was progressing on St Peter's, there was concern that Michelangelo would pass away before the dome was finished. However, once building commenced on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the completion of the design was inevitable. Michelangelo died in Rome in 1564, at the age of 88 (three weeks before his 89th birthday). His body was taken from Rome for interment at the Basilica of Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Florence.^[55]

On 7 December 2007, a red chalk sketch for the dome of St Peter's Basilica, possibly the last made by Michelangelo before his death, was discovered in the Vatican archives. It is extremely rare, since he destroyed his designs later in life. The sketch is a partial plan for one of the radial columns of the cupola drum of Saint Peter's.^[56]

Personal life

In his personal life, Michelangelo was abstemious. He told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: "However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man."^[57] Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating "more out of necessity than of pleasure"^[57] and that he "often slept in his clothes and ... boots."^[57] His biographer Paolo Giovio says, "His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him."^[58] He may not have minded, since he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person, bizzarro e fantastico, a man who "withdrew himself from the company of men."^[59]

It is impossible to know for certain whether Michelangelo had physical relationships (Condivi ascribed to him a "monk-like chastity"),^[60] but the nature of his sexuality is made apparent in his poetry.^[61] He wrote over three hundred sonnets and madrigals. The longest sequence was written to Tommaso dei Cavalieri (c. 1509–1587), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo met him in 1532, at the age of 57. These make up the first large sequence of poems in any modern tongue addressed by one man to another, predating Shakespeare's sonnets to the fair youth by fifty years:

I feel as lit by fire a cold countenance That burns me from afar and keeps itself ice-chill; A strength I feel two shapely arms to fill Which without motion moves every balance. — (Michael Sullivan, translation)

Cavalieri replied: "I swear to return your love. Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours." Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo until his death.^[62]

In 1542 Michelangelo met Cecchino dei Bracci who died only a year later, inspiring Michelangelo to write forty-eight funeral epigrams. Some of the objects of Michelangelo's affections, and subjects of his poetry, took advantage of him: the model Febo di Poggio asked for money in response to a love-poem, and a second model, Gherardo Perini, stole from him shamelessly.^[62]

The openly homoerotic nature of the poetry was a source of discomfort to later generations. Michelangelo's grandnephew, Michelangelo the Younger, published the poems in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed,^[63] and it was not until John Addington Symonds translated them into English in 1893 that the original genders were restored. Even in modern times some scholars continue to insist that, despite the restoration of the pronouns, they represent "an emotionless and elegant re-imagining of Platonic dialogue, whereby erotic poetry was seen as an expression of refined sensibilities".^[62]

Late in life, Michelangelo nurtured a great love for the poet and noble widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and who was in her late forties at the time. They wrote sonnets for each other and were in regular contact until she died. Condivi recalls Michelangelo's saying that his sole regret in life was that he did not kiss the widow's face in the same manner that he had her hand.^[46]

Works

Madonna and Child

The Madonna of the Steps is Michelangelo's earliest known work. It is carved in shallow relief, a technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th-century, Donatello and others such as Desiderio da Settignano.^[64] While the Madonna is in profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's work. The Taddeo Tondo of 1502, shows the Christ Child frightened by a Bullfinch, a symbol of the Crucifixion.^[31] The lively form of the child was later adapted by Raphael in the Bridgewater Madonna. The Bruges Madonna was, at the time of its creation, unlike other such statues which show the Virgin proudly presenting her son. Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's clasping hand, is about to step off into the world.^[65] The Doni Tondo, depicting the Holy Family, has elements of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo. The twisting motion present in the Bruges Madonna is accentuated in the painting. The painting heralds the forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.^[31]

• 

  The Madonna of the Steps (1490–92)

• 

  The Taddei Tondo (1502)

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  Madonna and Child. Brügge, Belgium (1504)

• 

  The Doni Tondo (1504–06)

Male figure

The kneeling angel is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca of St Dominic in the church dedicated to that saint in Bologna. Several other artists had worked on the scheme, beginning with Nicola Pisano in the 13th century. In the late 15th century, the project was managed by Niccolò dell'Arca. An angel holding a candlestick, by Niccolò, was already in place.^[66] Although the two angels form a pair, there is a great contrast between the two works, the one depicting a delicate child with flowing hair clothed in Gothic robes with deep folds, and Michelangelo's depicting a robust and muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style. Everything about Michelangelo's angel is dynamic.^[67] Michelangelo's Bacchus was a commission with a specified subject, the youthful God of Wine. The sculpture has all the traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet.^[66] While the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality, which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.^[68] In the so-called Dying Slave, Michelangelo has again has utilised the figure with marked contraposto to suggest a particular human state, in this case waking from sleep. With the Rebellious Slave It is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius, now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost finished state.^[69] These two works were to have a profound influence on later sculpture, through Rodin who studied them at the Louvre.^[70] The Bound Slave is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb. The works, known collectively at The Captives, each show the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the rock in which it is lodged. The works give a unique insight into the sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he perceived within the rock.^[71]

• 

  Angel by Michelangelo, early work (1494–95)

• 

  Bacchus by Michelangelo, early work (1496–97)

• 

  Dying slave Louvre (1513)

• 

  Bound slave, known a Atlas (1530–34)

Sistine Chapel Ceiling

The Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted between 1508 and 1512.^[72] The ceiling is a flattened barrel vault supported on twelve triangular pendentives that rise from between the windows of the chapel. The commission, as envisaged by Pope Julius II, was to adorn the pendentives with figures of the twelve apostles.^[73] Michelangelo, who was reluctant to take the job, persuaded the Pope to give him a free hand the composition.^[74] The resultant scheme of decoration awed his contemporaries and has inspired other artists ever since.^[75] The scheme is of nine panels illustrating episodes from the Book of Genesis, set in an architectonic frame. On the pendentives, Michelangelo replaced the proposed Apostles with Prophets and Sibyls who heralded the coming of the Messiah.^[74]

Michelangelo began painting with the later episodes in the narrative, the pictures including locational details and groups of figures, the Drunkenness of Noah being the first of this group.^[74] In the later compositions, painted after the initial scaffolding had been removed, Michelangelo made the figures larger.^[74] One of the central images, The Creation of Adam is one of the best known and most reproduced works in the history of art. The final panel, showing God dividing Light from Darkness is the broadest in style and was painted in a single day. As the model for the Creator, Michelangelo has depicted himself in the action of painting the ceiling.^[74]

• 

  The Drunkenness of Noah

• 

  The Deluge (detail)

• 

  The Creation of Adam (1510)

• 

  The First day of Creation

As supporters to the smaller scenes, Michelangelo painted twenty youths who have variously been interpreted as angels, as muses, or simply as decoration. Michelangelo referred to them as "ignudi".^[76] The figure reproduced may be seen in context in the above image of God dividing Light from Darkness. In the process of painting the ceiling, Michelangelo made studies for different figures, of which some, such as that for The Libyan Sibyl have survived, demonstrating the care taken by Michelangelo in details such as the hands and feet.^[77] The Prophet Jeremiah, contemplating the downfall of Jerusalem, is an image of the artist himself.

• 

  Ignudo (1511)

• 

  Studies for The Libyan Sibyl

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  The Libyan Sibyl (1511)

• 

  The Prophet Jeremiah (1511)

Figure compositions

Michelangelo's relief of the Battle of the Centaurs, created while he was still a youth associated with the Medici Academy, is an unusually complex relief in that it shows a great number of figures involved in a vigorous struggle. Such a complex disarray of figures was rare in Florentine art, where it would usually only be found in images showing either the Massacre of the Innocents or the Torments of Hell. The relief treatment, in which some of the figures are boldly projecting, may indicate Michelangelo's familiarity with Roman sarcophagus reliefs from the collection of Lorenzo Medici, and similar marble panels created by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, and with the figurative compositions on Ghiberti's Baptistry Doors.

The composition of the Battle of Cascina, is known in its entirety only from copies, as the original cartoon, according to Vasari, was so admired that it deteriorated and was eventually in pieces. It reflects the earlier relief in the energy and diversity of the figures, with many different postures, and many being viewed from the back, as they turn toward the approaching enemy and prepare for battle.

In The Last Judgement it is said that Michelangelo drew inspiration from a fresco by Melozzo da Forli in the Church of the Holy Apostles, Rome. While the work is very different in character to Michelangelo's, Melozzo had depicting figures from different angles, as if they were floating in the Heaven and seen from below. Melozzo's majestic figure of Christ, with windblown cloak, demonstrates a degree of foreshortening of the figure that had also been employed by Andrea Mantegna, but was not usual in the frescos of Florentine painters. In The Last Judgement Michelangelo had the opportunity to depict, on an unprecedented scale, figures in the action of either rising heavenward or falling and being dragged down.

In the two frescos of the Pauline Chapel, the Crucifixion of Peter and the Conversion of Paul, Michelangelo has used the various groups of figures to convey a complex narrative. In the Crucifixion of Peter soldiers busy themselves about their assigned duty of digging a post hole and raising the cross while various people look on and discuss the events. A group of horrified women cluster in the foreground, while another group of Christian are led by a tall man to witness the events. In the right foreground, Michelangelo walks out of the painting with an expression of disillusionment.

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  The Battle of the Centaurs (1492)

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  Copy of the lost Battle of Cascina by Bastiano da Sangallo

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  The Last Judgement, detail of the Redeemed. (see whole image above)

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  Crucifixion of St Peter

Architecture

Michelangelo's architectural commissions included a number that were not realised, notably the facade for Brunelleschi's Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model constructed, but which remains to this day unfinished rough brick. At the same church, Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to design the Medici Chapel and the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici.^[78] Pope Clement also commissioned the Laurentian Library, for which Michelangelo also designed the extraordinary vestibule with columns recessed into niches, and a staircase that appears to spill out of the library like a flow of lava, according to Pevsner, ....revealing Mannerism in its most sublime architectural form.^[79]

In 1546 Michelangelo produced the highly complex ovoid design for the pavement of the Campidoglio and began designing an upper storey for the Farnese Palace. In 1547 he took on the job of completing St Peter's Basilica, begun to a design by Bramante, and with several intermediate designs by several architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante's design, retaining the basic form and concepts by simplifying and strengthening the design to create a more dynamic and unified whole.^[80] Although the late 16th-century engraving depicts the dome as having a hemispherical profile, the dome of Michelangelo's model is somewhat ovoid and the final product, as completed by Giacomo della Porta is more so.^[81]

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  The vestibule of the Laurentian Library has Mannerist features which challenge the Classical order of Brunelleschi's adjacent church.

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  Michelangelo's redesign of the ancient Capitoline Hill included a complex spiralling pavement with a star at its centre.

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  Michelangelo's design for St Peter's is both massive but contained, with the corners between the apsidal arms of the Greek Cross filled by square projections.

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  The exterior is surrounded by a giant order of pilasters supporting a continuous cornice. Four small cupolas cluster around the dome.

Death

In his old age, Michelangelo created a number of Pietas in which he apparently reflects upon mortality. They are heralded by the Victory, perhaps created for the tomb of Pope Julius II but left unfinished. In this group, the youthful victor overcomes an older hooded figure, with the features of Michelangelo.

The Pieta of Vittoria Colonna is a chalk drawing of a type described as "presentation drawings", as they might be given as a gift by an artist, and were not necessarily studies towards a painted work. In this image, Mary's upraise arms and upraised hands are indicative of her prophetic role. The frontal aspect is reminiscent of Massaccio's fresco of the Holy Trinity in Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

In the Florentine Pieta, Michelangelo again depicts himself, this time as the aged Nicodemus lowering the body of Jesus from the cross into the arms of Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene. Michelangelo smashed the left arm and leg of the figure of Jesus. His pupil Tiberio Calcagni repaired the arm and drilled a hole in which to fix a replacement leg. He also worked on the figure of Mary Magdalene.

Probably Michelangelo's last sculpture, the Rondannini Pieta could never be completed because Michelangelo carved it away until there was insufficient stone. The legs and a detached arm remain from a previous stage of the work. As it remains, the sculpture has an abstracted quality, in keeping with 20th-century concepts of sculpture.

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  Statue of Victory (1534), Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

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  The Pieta of Vittoria Colonna (c. 1540)

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  Michelangelo and Tiberio Calcagni, Pieta Firenze (c. 1550-61)

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  The Rondanini Pieta (1552–64)

Michelangelo's legacy

Michelangelo, with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, is one of the three giants of the Florentine High Renaissance. Although their names are often cited together, Michelangelo was younger than Leonardo by 23 years, and older than Raphael by eight. Because of his reclusive nature, he had little to do with either artist and outlived both of them by more than forty years. Michelangelo took few sculpture students. He employed Francesco Granacci, who was his fellow pupil at the Medici Academy, and became one of several assistants on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.^[37] Michelangelo appears to have used assistants mainly for the more manual tasks of preparing surfaces and grinding colours. Despite this, his works were to have a great influence on painters, sculptors and architects for many generations to come.

While Michelangelo's David is the most famous male nude of all time and destined to be reproduced in order to grace cities around the world, some of his other works have had perhaps even greater impact on the course of art. The twisting forms and tensions of the Victory, the Bruges Madonna and the Medici Madonna make them the heralds of the Mannerist art. The unfinished giants for the tomb of Pope Julius II had profound effect on late-19th- and 20th-century sculptors such as Rodin and Henry Moore.

Michelangelo's foyer of the Laurentian Library was one of the earliest buildings to utilise Classical forms in a plastic and expressive manner. This dynamic quality was later to find its major expression in Michelangelo's centrally planned St Peter's, with its giant order, its rippling cornice and its upward-launching pointed dome. The dome of St Peter's was to influence the building of churches for many centuries, including Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome and St Paul's Cathedral, London, as well as the civic domes of many public buildings and the state capitals across America.

Artists who were directly influenced by Michelangelo include Raphael, who imitated Michelangelo's prophets in two of his works, including his depiction of the great master himself in the School of Athens. Other artists such as Pontormo drew on the writhing forms of the Last Judgement and the frescos of the Capella Paolina.^{[citation needed]}

The Sistine Chapel ceiling was a work of unprecedented grandeur, both for its architectonic forms, to be imitated by many Baroque ceiling painters, and also for the wealth of its inventiveness in the study of figures. Vasari wrote:

The work has proved a veritable beacon to our art, of inestimable benefit to all painters, restoring light to a world that for centuries had been plunged into darkness. Indeed, painters no longer need to seek for new inventions, novel attitudes, clothed figures, fresh ways of expression, different arrangements, or sublime subjects, for this work contains every perfection possible under those headings.^[82]

See also

Book: Key artists

• Michelangelo and the Medici
• Michelangelo phenomenon
• Renaissance art
• Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes
• 3001 Michelangelo asteroid
• The Agony and the Ecstasy

Footnotes

References

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Michelangelo.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Michelangelo

• Works by Michelangelo Buonarroti at Project Gutenberg
• The Digital Michelangelo Project
• The BP Special Exhibition Michelangelo Drawings – closer to the master
• Michelangelo's Drawings: Real or Fake? How to decide if a drawing is by Michelangelo.
• Januszczak, Waldemar (5 March 2006). "The Michelangelo Code". The Sunday Times. , suggesting Michelangelo's coded use of his knowledge of anatomy.
• "Michelangelo: The Man and the Myth"

v t e Michelangelo List of works · Key: *Attributed, †Lost   Sculptures Florence, c. 1488–92 †Head of a Faun (c. 1489) Madonna of the Stairs (c. 1491) Battle of the Centaurs (c. 1492) Crucifix (1492) Bologna, 1494–95 Additions to the Ark of St Dominic (St Petronius, St Proclus, Angel) Rome, 1496–1500 †Sleeping Cupid (1496) Bacchus (1496-97) †Standing Cupid Pietà (1498-99) Florence, 1501–5 David (1501–04) Madonna of Bruges (1501–04) Additions to the Piccolomini Altarpiece (Saints Peter, Paul, Pius and Gregory, 1503–04) Pitti Tondo (c. 1503-04) Taddei Tondo (c. 1504-06) St. Matthew (c. 1505) Tomb of Pope Julius II, 1505-45 Moses (c. 1513–15) Rebellious Slave (1513–16) Dying Slave (1513–16) Young Slave (c. 1519–36) Bearded Slave (c. 1519–36) Atlas Slave (c. 1519–36) Awakening Slave (c. 1519–36) The Genius of Victory (c. 1532–34) Rachel (1545) Leah (1545) Florence, 1516–34 Christ Carrying the Cross (1519–20) Apollo (c. 1530) Crouching Boy (c. 1530–34) Medici Chapel (1519–34) Giuliano de' Medici Night Day Lorenzo de' Medici Dusk Dawn Medici Madonna Rome, 1534–64 Brutus (1538) Florentine Pietà (c. 1547-53) *Palestrina Pietà (c. 1555) Rondanini Pietà (1552–64)   Paintings Panel paintings *The Torment of Saint Anthony (c. 1487–88) Manchester Madonna (c. 1497) The Entombment (c. 1500-01) Doni Tondo (c. 1506–07) †Leda and the Swan (1530) Salone dei Cinquecento †Battle of Cascina (1504) Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1508–12) The Last Judgment (1537–41) Cappella Paolina The Martyrdom of St Peter (c. 1542–45) The Conversion of Saul (c. 1545–50)   Architecture Florence New Sacristy (1520–34) and Laurentian Library (1523–59) in the Basilica of San Lorenzo Rome Piazza del Campidoglio (1536–46) Palazzo Farnese (1546) St. Peter's Basilica (1546–1564) San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (1559–60) Porta Pia (1561–65) Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (1561–64)   More Works on paper Study of a Kneeling Nude Girl for The Entombment (c. 1500–1501) Epifania (c. 1550–53) Milieu Cecchino dei Bracci Tommaso dei Cavalieri Vittoria Colonna Ascanio Condivi Gherardo Perini Sebastiano del Piombo Febo di Poggio Luigi del Riccio Related topics Art patronage of Julius II Casa Buonarroti Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects Replicas of David Wikimedia Michelangelo at Wikimedia Commons Michelangelo at Wikiquote

v t e Decoration of the Sistine Chapel Key: 1 Pietro Perugino · 2 Sandro Botticelli · 3 Cosimo Rosselli · 4 Domenico Ghirlandaio · 5 Biagio d'Antonio · 6 Piero di Cosimo · 7Luca Signorelli · 8 Bartolomeo della Gatta · 9 Michelangelo · 10 Raphael Life of Moses Moses Leaving to Egypt 1 The Trials of Moses 2 The Crossing of the Red Sea 3/4/5 The Descent from Mount Sinai 3/6 The Punishment of the Rebels 2 The Testament and Death of Moses 7/8 Life of Christ The Baptism of Christ 1 The Temptations of Christ 2 The Vocation of the Apostles 4 The Sermon on the Mount 3 The Delivery of the Keys 1 The Last Supper 3 Ceiling 9 (Gallery) The Separation of Light from Darkness The Creation of the Sun, Moon and Planets The Separation of Land and Water The Creation of Adam The Creation of Eve The Fall of Man and the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden The Sacrifice of Noah The Flood The Drunkenness of Noah Prophets Jonah Jeremiah Ezekiel Joel Zechariah Isaiah Daniel Sibyls Persian Sibyl Erythraean Sibyl Delphic Sibyl Cumaean Sibyl Libyan Sibyl Altar wall The Last Judgment 9 Tapestries The Lives of Saints Peter and Paul 10 Pope Sixtus IV Art patronage of Julius II Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 24585191 LCCN: n80152368 ISNI: 0000 0001 2124 3640 GND: 118582143 SELIBR: 292503 BNF: cb11885845q ULAN: 500010654 NLA: 36432281 NDL: 00449952 NKC: jn19992000718 ICCU: IT\ICCU\CFIV\017291

Persondata
Name	Michelangelo
Alternative names	Buonarroti, Michelangelo; Buonarroti, Michelangelo di Lodovico
Short description	Sculptor, painter and architect
Date of birth	6 March 1475
Place of birth	Caprese near Arezzo, Republic of Florence (present-day Tuscany, Italy)
Date of death	18 February 1564
Place of death	Rome, Papal States (present-day Italy