Michelangelo, Master of masterpieces.

He is one of the greatest artists of all time, a man whose name has become synonymous with the word "masterpiece": Michelangelo Buonarroti. As an artist he was unmatched, the creator of works of sublime beauty that express the full breadth of the human condition.
In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. 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"). One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilita, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance, Mannerism.

Early life: Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany. He was second of five brothers. His family had for several generations been small-scale bankers in Florence but his father, Lodovico di Leonardo di Buonarroti di Simoni, failed to maintain its status, holding to occasional government jobs. At the time of Michelangelo's birth he was Judicial administrator of small-town Caprese and local administrator of Chiusi. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarroti claimed to descend from Countess Mathilde of Canossa; this claim was probably false, but Michelangelo himself believed it. However, several months after Michelangelo's birth the family returned to Florence where Michelangelo was raised. At later times, during the prolonged illness and after the death of his mother, 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. Michelangelo once said to the biographer of artists Giorgio Vasari, "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." 

Michelangelo's father sent him to study grammar with the humanist Francesco da Urbino in Florence as a young boy. The young artist, however, showed no interest in school, preferring instead to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of painters. Michelangelo was apprenticed in painting with Domenico Ghirlandaio and in sculpture with Bertoldo di Giovanni. Michelangelo's father managed to persuade Ghirlandaio to pay the 14-year-old artist, which was highly unusual at the time. When in 1489 Florence's ruler Lorenzo de' Medici asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci. From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended Lorenzo's school and was influenced by many prominent people who modified and expanded his ideas on art, following the dominant Platonic view of that age, and even his feelings about sexuality. It was during this period that Michelangelo met literary personalities like Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino. Michelangelo finished Madonna of the Steps (1490-1492) and Battle of the Centaurs (1491-1492). 

Madonna of the Steps

Battle of the Centaurs

 Early adulthood: Lorenzo's death on April 8, 1492, brought a complete reversal of Michelangelo's circumstances. Michelangelo left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he produced a Wooden crucifix (1493), as a gift to the prior of the church of Santa Maria del Santo Spirito who had permitted him some studies of anatomy on the corpses of the church's hospital. Between 1493 and 1494 he bought the marble for a larger than life statue of Hercules, which was sent to France and disappeared sometime in the 1700s. He re-entered the court on January 20, 1494, when, after a great deal of snow had fallen, the young Piero de Medici commissioned a snow statue from him.

The same year, however, the Medici were expelled from Florence after the rise of Savonarola, while Michelangelo had left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna. Here he was commissioned to finish the carving of the last small figures of the tomb and shrine of St. Dominic, in the church with the same name. He returned to Florence at the end of 1494, as Charles VIII had suffered defeats and Florence was no longer in danger of being sacked by the French. He did not receive any commissions from the new city government under Savonarola, and so linked up with the Medicis. During the half year he spent in Florence he worked on two statuettes; a child St. John the Baptist and a sleeping Cupid. Supposedly, his commissioner, Lorenzo de 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, found out that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome. 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.

Rome: On June 25, 1496 at the age of 21, Michelangelo arrived in Rome. On July 4 Michelangelo started to carve an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god, Bacchus, commissioned by Cardinal Raffaele Riario; the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden.

Roman wine god

 Subsequently, in November of 1497, the French ambassador in the Holy See commissioned one of his most famous works, the Pieta. The contemporary opinion about this work - "a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture" - 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."

The Pietà

 The contract was agreed in the August of the following year. The Pieta was probably finished before Michelangelo was 25 years old.  Just days after it was placed in Saint Peter's, Michelangelo overheard a pilgrim remark that the work was done by Christoforo Solari, a compatriot from Lombard. That night in a fit of rage, Michelangelo took hammer and chisel and placed the following inscription on the sash running across Mary's breast in lapidary letters: MICHEL ANGELUS BONAROTUS FLORENT FACIBAT  (Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made this). This is the only work that Michelangelo ever signed. Michelangelo later regretted his passionate outburst of pride and determined to never again sign a work of his hands. Though he devoted himself mainly to sculpture, during his first stay in Rome Michelangelo never stopped his daily practice of drawing.

First Return to Florence: On August 4th, 1501, after several years of political confusion, a republic was once again proclaimed in Florence. The order established over the following four years received the unconditional support of Michelangelo. Also, during the same period, the artist clearly expressed his own political orientation, unlike in later work.

Twelve days after the proclamation of the republic, the Arte della Lana or Wool Guild, the wealthy corporation responsible for the maintenance and ornamentation of the Cathedral, commissioned him to sculpt a statue of David. 

statue of David

 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.

When Giuliano della Rovere was elected to the papal seat in 1503, he was already an old man. Consequently, everyone expected a pontificate of passage. But Julius II (this was the name he chose) nursed an ambitious plan and did everything he could to realize it, demonstrating an extraordinary vitality in this. He understood the role of the pope in extremely authoritative terms, and conducted himself according to this ideal, trying to restore the papal state to greatness. His papacy saw not only intense political, social, and military activity, but also some major artistic commissions, which directly affected the urban fabric of Rome. In his role as a patron, Julius II showed an extraordinary audacity and assurance in the choice of the artistic talents to whom he turned: Bramante and Michelangelo, Raphael and the Sangallos, Peruzzi and Bramantino, Sodoma and Lorenzo Lotto were among the many artists who worked for him. 

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. From these years date the Bruges Madonna (Notre Dame, Bruges) and the painted tondo of the Holy Family (Uffizi). 

The Bruges Madonna

Tondo of the Holy Family

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling: In April 1508, Michelangelo was summoned back to Rome by Julius II, but he was still not able to start on the papal tomb. In fact Julius II had a new job for him, painting twelve figures of apostles and some decorations on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

In May 1508, Michelangelo began to make the preparatory designs for the Sistine ceiling. It was not until the fall that he started the actual painting, calling on the assistance of Giuliano Bugiardini, Aristotele da Sangallo, and his old friend Francesco Granacci, along with a number of laborers. However the work did not proceed as the master wished, and he soon fired all of his assistants, removed what had already been painted and, between the end of 1508 and January 1509, recommenced the whole demanding enterprise on his own. 

The Sistine Chapel ceiling

 Detail of Sistine Chapel ceiling

Detail of Sistine Chapel ceiling

The Tomb of Julius II: Before the assignment of the Sistine Ceiling in 1505, Michelangelo had been commissioned by Julius II to produce his tomb, which was planned to be the most magnificent of Christian times. It was to be located in the new Basilica of St. Peter's, then under construction. Michelangelo enthusiastically went ahead with the challenging project, which was to include more than 40 figures, spending months in the quarries to obtain the necessary Carrara marble. Due to a mounting shortage of money, however, the pope ordered him to put aside the tomb project in favor of painting the Sistine ceiling.

The Medici Tombs: While residing in Florence for this extended period, Michelangelo also undertook-between 1519 and 1534-the commission of the Medici Tombs for the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo. His design called for two large wall tombs facing each other across the high, domed room. One was intended for Lorenzo de' Medici (d. 1519) , duke of Urbino; the other for Giuliano de' Medici (1479-1516), duke of Nemours.

 The tombs of the Medici were of a completely new form. Michelangelo abandoned the use of architecture and arabesques that decorated all Florentine tombs, and that he himself had widely used in his designs for the tomb of Pope Julius II.

In 1534, Michelangelo left Florence forever. His decision never to return was certainly influenced by the open hostility of Duke Alessandro de Medici and the misunderstandings with his fellow citizens that had arisen during the siege, which led him to say: "I never knew a people more ungrateful and arrogant than the Florentines." 


The Last Judgment: The idea of commissioning an enormous fresco, the largest ever painted in that century, depicting the Last Judgment, was probably suggested to Clement VII by the traumatic events that were undermining the unity of Christians at the time. After the pope's death, on September 25, 1534, and only two days after Michelangelo's arrival in Rome, his successor, Paul III Farnese confirmed the commission to Michelangelo, and in April 1535 scaffolding was put up in front of the altar wall.
 
All that had happened in the church in the years that preceded the Judgment, including the Reformation and the Sack of Rome, had a direct influence on the work's conception: painted on the altar wall, the Last Judgment was to represent humanity face to face with salvation. 

The Last Judgment

 The Last Judgment, which Michelangelo finished in 1541 was the  largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts Judgment Day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts into motion the inevitable separation, with the saved ascending on the left side of the painting and the damned descending on the right into a Dantesque hell. As was his custom, Michelangelo portrayed all the figures nude, but prudish draperies were added by another artist (who was dubbed the "breeches-maker") a decade later, as the cultural climate became more conservative. Michelangelo painted his own image in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew.

Michelangelo's Pietas: Loneliness and sorrow were Michelangelo's companions in the last years of his life. His younger friends, Vittoria Colonna and Luigi del Riccio were already dead, and in 1556 his faithful servant Urbino died too. In this period, he insistently produced studies and drawings of the Crucifixion and the Lament over the Dead Christ.

They were also the years of his last sculptures, including the Florentine Pietà, carved for his own tomb. Dissatisfied with his work, Michelangelo attacked the sculpture with a hammer, breaking off a leg and an arm from the figure of Christ and one of the Virgin Mary's hands. Another sculpture the so-called Rondanini Pietà, consisting solely of the figures of the Madonna and Christ, may have been begun by Michelangelo before 1550 but had remained unfinished. 

Florentine Pietà

Rondanini Pietà

 Michelangelo Buonarroti died, giving himself up to God, on February 18th, 1564, after a "slow fever." As Vasari tells us, he made his will in three sentences, in front of his physician and his friends Tommaso Cavalieri and Daniele da Volterra, saying that he left "his soul to God, his body to the earth, and his material possessions to his nearest relations."