Biography Of Michelangelo

Michelangelo Buonarrati

The typical stereotype of artists of the past, is a lonely, tormented outsider, who creates his art through his pain and anguish. Well Michelangelo was just that. In fact the stereotype is modeled after him. He was an unsociable loner who didn’t have many friends, lovers, or even assistants to help him. His temper and rudeness drove others away from him and kept him lonely. However, even though he was not the most likeable or social guy, he still produced some of the most amazing artwork ever! In fact, although he was lonely and tortured, out of all the artists to have ever lived, Michelangelo Buonarrati is one of the most prominent ever, and possibly the best.

Although Michelangelo was born March 6 1475 in Caprice, Tuscany, his dad and himself always considered him a “son of Florence”. He was born of Ludovicio Buonarroti, his father, and Francesca Neri, his mother. However, Michelangelo never mentioned or credited his mother, for she was too sick and frail to nurse him and died when he was only six. As a result he was placed with a wet Nurse in a family of stone cutters. This is where he had his first dreams of being an artist. Because Michelangelo had a grim and unaffectionate childhood, he tended to keep to himself and created a lack of trust with his peers. Nonetheless, his father recognized his intelligence and sent him to the school of Francesco Galeoto. While there, he studied Latin principles and made friends with Francesco Granacci, who convinced him to follow his own artistic vocation. He then apprenticed under Domencio Ghirlandaio at the age of thirteen after learning the art of fresco. A year later he at the sculpture school in the Medici gardens and soon after was invited to the household of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the “Magnificent”. There he met two younger Medici who would later become Pope Leo X and Pope Clement VII(www.Michelangelo.com). He also produced his first sculpting, “The Rape of Dejanira”(Benets’s) During his years of study at the gardens of San Marco, he studied human movement and anatomy, from corpses. By the age of sixteen he had already produced two relief sculptures, “The Battle of the Centaurs” and “The Madonna of the Stairs”. Both of which exhibited his own personal style that he was developing.

After the de...

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...ect in 1546. Which may have been his greatest responsibility ever, since he believed he was destined by God to do it. Furthermore he would accept no payment for this monumental task.

Towards the end of his life Michelangelo was a sad and lonely man, as most of his friends had already died. During this period he drew the “Crucifixtion” and the “Lament over the dead Christ”, and sculpted the “Florentine Pieta”, which was carved fro his own tomb. Growing dissatisfied with it he attacked it with a hammer and chisel, and broke off a leg and arm of Christ and a hand Mary. Michelangelo then died on February 18 of 1564 after a slow fever. According to Vasseri, he made his will in three sentences in front of his physician and friends. Saying that he left “his soul to God, his body to earth and his possesions to his nearest relations”. His dead body was put in a sarcophagus in San Apostli Church , but then after a few days his nephew took his corpse to Santa Croce, where he asked to be buried(CGFA). The citizens of Florence turned out in large numbers to pay their respects to his dead body.