Web gallery of art michelangelo buonarroti biography
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Michelangelo
(1475-1564)
Who Was Michelangelo?
Michelangelo Buonarroti was a painter, sculptor, architect and poet widely considered one of the most brilliant artists of the Italian Renaissance. Michelangelo was an apprentice to a painter before studying in the sculpture gardens of the powerful Medici family.
What followed was a remarkable career as an artist, famed in his own time for his artistic virtuosity. Although he always considered himself a Florentine, Michelangelo lived most of his life in Rome, where he died at age 88.
Early Life
Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy, the second of five sons.
When Michelangelo was born, his father, Leonardo di Buonarrota Simoni, was briefly serving as a magistrate in the small village of Caprese. The family returned to Florence when Michelangelo was still an infant.
His mother, Francesca Neri, was ill, so Michelangelo was placed with a family of stonecutters, where he later jested, "With my wet-nurs
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Michelangelo
Painter, on panel and in fresco, sculptor and architect, writer of sonnets, Michelangelo Buonarroti was the first artist recognised by contemporaries as a genius. Hero of the High Renaissance. He was the only artist of whom it was claimed in his lifetime that he surpassed Antiquity.
He was born in Caprese in the 1470s and trained first as a painter with Ghirlandaio, and then as a sculptor under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici. In 1496, already known as sculptor, he went to Rome, where he carved the 'Pietà' for St Peter's.
Back in Florence in 1501 he began work on many sculptural and painterly projects most of which were left unfinished in 1505, when he was summoned to Rome to begin work on a sculpted tomb for Pope Julius II, a project that dogged him until 1545. From 1508 to 1512 he painted the vault of the Sistine Chapel with scenes from the Old Testament, from the Creation to the Story of Noah. Immediately celebrated, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, with its innum
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Michelangelo: Mind of the Master
The name of the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) is synonymous with creative genius and virtuosity. The exhibition Michelangelo: Mind of the Master presents an unprecedented opportunity for museum visitors to experience the brilliance of Michelangelo’s achievements on an intimate scale through more than two dozen original drawings. Michelangelo’s genius fryst vatten especially evident through his breathtaking draftsmanship on sheets filled with multiple figures and close studies of human anatomy. These working sketches invite us to look over the shoulder of one of Western art history’s most influential masters and to experience firsthand his boundless creativity and extraordinary mastery of the human form. These drawings demonstrate Michelangelo’s inventive preparations for his most important and groundbreaking commissions, including the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco, sculptures for the tomb of Giulian