Biography of Michelangelo

1. Michelangelo
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2. Michelangelo Buonarroti
► Perhaps the greatest influence on western
art in the last five centuries, Michelangelo
was an Italian sculptor, architect, painter
and poet in the period known as the High
Renaissance. Along with contemporaries
Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, he is
considered one of the greatest masters in
the history of European art.

3. Biography
► Michelangelo was one of the most inspired
creators in the history of art and, with
Leonardo da Vinci, the most potent force in
the Italian High Renaissance. As a sculptor,
architect, painter, and poet, he exerted a
tremendous influence on his
contemporaries and on subsequent
Western art in general.

4. ► A Florentine—although born March 6, 1475, in the
small village of Caprese near Arezzo—
Michelangelo continued to have a deep
attachment to his city, its art, and its culture
throughout his long life. He spent the greater part
of his adulthood in Rome, employed by the popes;
characteristically, however, he left instructions that
he be buried in Florence, and his body was placed
there in a fine monument in the church of Santa
Croce.

5. David
► His great works were
almost entirely in the
service of the Catholic
Church, and include a
huge statue of the
Biblical hero David
(over 14 feet tall) in
Florence, sculpted
between 1501 and
1504

6. ► David
Gigantic marble, started in 1501 and completed in
1504
Michelangelo began work on the colossal figure of
David in 1501, and by 1504 the sculpture
(standing at 4.34m/14 ft 3 in tall) was in place
outside the Palazzo Vecchio. The choice of David
was supposed to reflect the power and
determination of Republican Florence and was
under constant attack from supporters of the
usurped Medicis. In the 19th century the statue
was moved to the Accademia.

7. ► The high point of Michelangelo's early style is the
gigantic (4.34 m/14.24 ft) marble David
(Accademia, Florence), which he produced
between 1501 and 1504, after returning to
Florence. The Old Testament hero is depicted by
Michelangelo as a lithe nude youth, muscular and
alert, looking off into the distance as if sizing up
the enemy Goliath, whom he has not yet
encountered. The fiery intensity of David's facial
expression is termed terribilità, a feature
characteristic of many of Michelangelo's figures
and of his own personality. David, Michelangelo's
most famous sculpture, became the symbol of
Florence and originally was placed in the Piazza
della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, the
Florentine town hall.

8. Michelangelo did actually slam down his hammer on the Duomo Pietà, his
last great statue, in just such an access of rage. And he didn’t stop
beating away at—crushing—the beautiful statue on which he had been
working off and on for months, maybe years, until he had ruined it for
good.

11. Sculpture

12. Moses
► Michelangelo made some of his
finest sculpture for the Julius Tomb,
including the Moses (circa 1515), the
central figure in the much reduced
monument now located in Rome's
church of San Pietro in Vincoli. The
muscular patriarch sits alertly in a
shallow niche, holding the tablets of
the Ten Commandments, his long
beard entwined in his powerful
hands. He looks off into the distance
as if communicating with God.

13. Pieta
► The marble Pietà (1498-1500),
still in its original place in Saint
Peter's Basilica. One of the
most famous works of art, the
Pietà was probably finished
before Michelangelo was 25
years old, and it is the only work
he ever signed. The youthful
Mary is shown seated
majestically, holding the dead
Christ across her lap, a theme
borrowed from northern
European art. Instead of
revealing extreme grief, Mary is
restrained, and her expression
is one of resignation.

14. The Dying Slave
► The Bound Slave and the Dying Slave
(both c. 1510-13), Musée du Louvre,
Paris, demonstrate Michelangelo's
approach to carving. He conceived of
the figure as being imprisoned in the
block. By removing the excess stone,
the form was released. Here, as is
frequently the case with his sculpture,
Michelangelo left the statues
unfinished (non-finito), either because
he was satisfied with them as is, or
because he no longer planned to use
them.

15. The Madonna of the Stairs

16. Bacchus
► The over-life-size Bacchus
(1496-98, Bargello,
Florence). One of the few
works of pagan rather than
Christian subject matter
made by the master, it
rivaled ancient statuary,
the highest mark of
admiration in Renaissance
Rome.

17. Sistine Chapel
► The ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel in
Rome (commissioned
by Pope Julius II), was
painted between 1508
and 1512.

18. ► Michelangelo was recalled to Rome by Pope Julius II in
1505 for two commissions. The most important one was for
the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Working high
above the chapel floor, lying on his back on scaffolding,
Michelangelo painted, between 1508 and 1512, some of
the finest pictorial images of all time. On the vault of the
papal chapel, he devised an intricate system of decoration
that included nine scenes from the Book of Genesis,
beginning with God Separating Light from Darkness and
including the Creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, the
Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve, and the Flood.
These centrally located narratives are surrounded by
alternating images of prophets and sibyls on marble
thrones, by other Old Testament subjects, and by the
ancestors of Christ.

19. ► In order to prepare for this enormous work,
Michelangelo drew numerous figure studies
and cartoons, devising scores of figure
types and poses. These awesome, mighty
images, demonstrating Michelangelo's
masterly understanding of human anatomy
and movement, changed the course of
painting in the West.

20. The Creation Of Man

21. The Creation of the Heavens

22. The Erythraean Sibyl

23. The Fall From Grace

24. The Flood

25. The Prophet Zachariah

26. The Last Judgement
► In Rome, in 1536, Michelangelo
was at work on the Last
Judgment for the alter wall of the
Sistine Chapel, which he finished
in 1541. 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.

27. The Last Judgement

28. Doni Tondo
► The Holy Family with
the infant St. John the
Baptist (the Doni
Tondo)
c. 1503-05

29. ► Sybille de Cummes
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in
Vatican City
Sibyls were female seers of
ancient Greece and Rome.
They were also known as
oracles. Like the Jewish
prophets of the Old Testament,
many sibyls had their sayings
recorded in books. Jewish
prophets spoke unbidden,
whereas sibyls tended to speak
only if consulted on specific
questions. They sometimes
answered in riddles or rhetorical
questions.

30. Sistine Chapel Virtual Tour
► http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/x-
Pano/CSN/Visit_CSN_Main.html

31. ► Dome of St. Peter's Basilica
Michelangelo's crowning
achievement as an architect
was his work at St. Peter's
Basilica, where he was made
chief architect in 1546. The
building was being constructed
according to Donato Bramante's
plan, but Michelangelo
ultimately became responsible
for the altar end of the building
on the exterior and for the final
form of its dome.

32. Michelangelo's Achievements
►
During his long lifetime, Michelangelo was an
intimate of princes and popes, from Lorenzo de'
Medici to Leo X, Clement VIII, and Pius III, as well
as cardinals, painters, and poets. Neither easy to
get along with nor easy to understand, he
expressed his view of himself and the world even
more directly in his poetry than in the other arts.
Much of his verse deals with art and the hardships
he underwent, or with Neoplatonic philosophy and
personal relationships.

33. ► The great Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto
wrote succinctly of this famous artist: “Michael
more than mortal, divine angel.” Indeed,
Michelangelo was widely awarded the
epithet“divine” because of his extraordinary
accomplishments. Two generations of Italian
painters and sculptors were impressed by his
treatment of the human figure: Raphael, Annabale
Carracci, Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Sebastiano
del Piombo, and Titian. His dome for St. Peter's
became the symbol of authority, as well as the
model, for domes all over the Western world; the
majority of state capitol buildings in the U.S., as
well as the Capitol in Washington, D.C., are
derived from it.

34. End Slide Show
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