Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. He was one of the most prominent and important artists of the Renaissance, supported by the Medici family of Florence.
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born as Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni on March 6, 1475 in Caprese in Tuscany. After this his family moved to Florence. Even as a young man he wanted to become an artist against the resistance of his father.
The life of Michelangelo Buonarroti
His mother died when the artist was only six years old, so the father married a second time, the lady Lucrezia Ubaldini. Michelangelo visited the school of fine arts and sculpture, which have the Medici set up in the garden of San Marco. On his travels he left outstanding testimonials of his artistic creation. It was long believed, he would be completely perfect results, in which he surpassed the artists of antiquity.
Influences on his works
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.
He died on February 18, 1564 in Rome.
In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one"). One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilit, 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 Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.