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"Luminous Art & Design :: Art & Artists"
Michelangelo :: Biography and Books"
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Michelangelo (1475-1564) was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect and poet of the High Renaissance. He was celebrated as the ‘Divine One’ and created masterworks as Pietà (1499), David (1504) and the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1512).
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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475 –1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect and poet of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (High Renaissance). His great works were unique, scarcely imitable and mostly created in the service of the Catholic Church: Pietà (1497–1499), David (1501–1504), the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508–1512) and St. Peter's (1546–). He is considered one of the greatest artists of all time and in his lifetime he was celebrated as Il Divino, the 'Divine One'.
Michelangelo claimed that he was self-taught, one might perceive in his work the influence of such artists as Leonardo da Vinci. They are often considered to be contenders for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man. Michelangelo's David was sculpted in the same period that Leonardo was painting the Mona Lisa. In contradiction to the ideas of his rival, Michelangelo saw nature as an enemy that had to be overcome.
Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy. Michelangelo made many drawings as a child, and at the age of 13 was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, a respected artist of the day. Michelangelo's father was able to get Ghirlandaio to pay the young artist, which was unheard of at the time. In fact, normally students had to pay their masters for the education. After one year Ghirlandaio recommended him to the ruler of Florence and a distant cousin of Michaelangelo’s father, Lorenzo de' Medici.
Michelangelo's skill in sculpture was already greatly admired in his time. He believed that every stone had a statue within it and the job of the sculptor was to free the form. With the Pietà he showed his unique skills to extract two distinct figures from a single marble block. His David (1501 – 04), a colossal statue portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom, had a perfectly proportioned body and musculature and is a prime example of the Renaissance ideal.
Michelangelo was a great painter of the human figure as well. He was commissioned to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508 – 12). Originally, he was to paint the 12 Apostles, but he protested for a different and more complex scheme. Within a ring of prophets and sibyls were nine panels on biblical history. Three panels were devoted to the Creation, three to the story of Adam and Eve, and three to the story of Noah and the great flood. The most famous paintings on the ceiling are the Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, the Prophet Isaiah and the Cumaean Sibyl.
Michelangelo was also the most original, inventive, and influential architect of the time. In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, completing only the dome and four columns for its base before his death.
Michelangelo's life was long and his career spanned 75 years. This afforded him the time to produce so many artworks. He far outlived all of his friends and all nine Popes that he worked for. Il Divino achieved something so great that many thought the hand of God himself was the actual creator.
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