Michelangelo
Michelangelo Buonarroti was one of the defining artists of the Italian Renaissance. Born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni in Caprese on March 6, 1475, he worked as a sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. Contemporaries called him “Il Divino”—the divine one—yet despite his mastery of several arts, Michelangelo regarded himself first as a sculptor.
FLORENCE AND THE MAKING OF AN ARTIST
His family returned to Florence soon after his birth, and he spent part of his childhood in nearby Settignano, a village of stoneworkers. At thirteen he entered Domenico Ghirlandaio’s workshop, where he learned drawing and fresco. He then studied sculpture in the Medici garden under Bertoldo di Giovanni and encountered Lorenzo de’ Medici’s humanist circle. Classical sculpture and anatomical study helped shape his art of powerful bodies, compressed movement, and intense emotion.
THE PIETÀ AND DAVID
In Rome, the French cardinal Jean de Bilhères commissioned a Pietà for his tomb in Old St. Peter’s. Completed around 1499, it shows the Virgin supporting the dead Christ with extraordinary tenderness and control of marble. It is the only sculpture Michelangelo signed.
Back in Florence, Michelangelo carved David between 1501 and 1504 from a huge block begun by an earlier sculptor and left unused for decades. Placed outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the statue became a public guardian and an emblem of the Florentine Republic.
THE SISTINE CHAPEL
Pope Julius II called Michelangelo to Rome in 1505 to design a vast papal tomb, a project repeatedly altered over the next forty years. In 1508 Julius instead commissioned the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo had learned fresco with Ghirlandaio but had attempted nothing on this scale. By 1512 he had created an immense structure of Genesis scenes, prophets, sibyls, ancestors of Christ, and athletic nudes. The charged space between the hands in The Creation of Adam became one of art’s best-known images.
The Last Judgment was commissioned by Clement VII and painted on the chapel’s altar wall from 1536 to 1541 under Paul III. Its mass of saved and damned bodies reflects Reformation-era conflict and debates over Catholic reform. Its nudity provoked controversy; a 1564 church decision assigned Daniele da Volterra to cover parts with painted draperies.
STONE, ARCHITECTURE, AND POETRY
The long struggle over Julius II’s tomb produced Moses and six figures known as the Prisoners or Slaves. Four unfinished Prisoners in Florence preserve drill marks and stages of carving, making their bodies seem to emerge from marble. The effect recalls a sonnet in which Michelangelo described a form conceived by the artist as contained within the stone. The figures were left unfinished as the tomb plans changed.
Michelangelo also transformed architecture. He designed the Medici Chapel and the Laurentian Library, whose compressed vestibule and flowing staircase are landmarks of Mannerism. In 1546 Paul III placed him in charge of St. Peter’s Basilica. Michelangelo simplified and unified earlier plans and built the drum of its great dome. Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana completed the dome in 1590 with changes to its profile.
Hundreds of poems and letters survive. His verse explores love, faith, art, aging, and death; his correspondence records commissions, money, family duties, and friendships. Together they reveal struggle behind his fame. Two biographies appeared during his lifetime—evidence of his extraordinary status.
DEATH AND LEGACY
Michelangelo died in Rome on February 18, 1564, aged eighty-eight. First buried at Santi Apostoli, his body was secretly carried to Florence as merchandise by his nephew Leonardo. He was reburied in Santa Croce, where Giorgio Vasari designed his tomb.
Through marble, fresco, architecture, drawing, and poetry, Michelangelo changed how later generations imagined the human body and the ambitions of the artist. His work does not offer beauty without struggle: its power comes from the effort to give spiritual meaning a physical form.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Metropolitan Museum of Art — Michelangelo: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2017/michelangelo/exhibition-galleries
Vatican Museums — The Sistine Chapel: https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/cappella-sistina/storia-cappella-sistina.html
Galleria dell’Accademia — David: https://www.galleriaaccademiafirenze.it/en/artworks/david-michelangelo/
St. Peter’s Basilica — The Dome: https://www.basilicasanpietro.va/en/san-pietro/the-dome
British Museum — Michelangelo: The Last Decades: https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/michelangelo-last-decades
Opera di Santa Croce — Michelangelo’s Tomb: https://www.santacroceopera.it/en/catalogue-of-works/michelangelo-buonarroti-monumental-tomb-vasari/