Michelangelo (1475–1564)

The Goddess of the Dawn, on the tomb of Italian statesman and scholar Lorenzo de' Medici, dated c. 1525, by the Italian sculptor and painter Michelangelo.

Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. Active in his native Florence and in Rome, his giant talent dominated the High Renaissance. The marble David (1501–04; Accademia, Florence) set a new standard in nude sculpture. His massive figure style was translated into fresco on the ceiling (1508–12) and altar wall (1536–41) of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Michelangelo's influence, particularly on the development of Mannerism, was profound. His architectural works, including the dome of St Peter's basilica, also greatly influenced the emergence of the baroque style.

Michelangelo was born in Caprese, but raised in Florence. Early influences included the successful artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, to whom he was apprenticed at the age of 13, the paintings of Giotto, and the frescoes of Masaccio. Early work in the Medici's school and collection of classic sculpture, inspired Michelangelo's great passion for the sculptural form, and encouraged his empathy with the human figure as a conveyor of highly-charged emotion. In the colossal David, as in other subsequent figurative work, the human form serves not as a representation, but as an encapsulation of feeling, both physical and emotional. The same energy is unleashed in the tremendous biblical symphony he created for the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, where the Creation of the World and of Man, the Fall, and the Flood are interpreted in nine great compositions, flanked by the figures of prophets and sibyls, and with supporting ‘slaves’ or ‘atlases’. His vision is conveyed with the utmost force and lucidity by the human figure and gesture alone, as in the magnificent Creation of Adam. For his work on the altar wall, Michelangelo took the Last Judgement as his subject. In a different key from his earlier work, it is sombrely majestic and tells of torture and martyrdom, stern retribution, and tragic fate. This tragic masterpiece lacks the beauty of the ceiling work, yet in its command of movement in space, it indicated the course that Italian art was to follow for a century to come.

Michelangelo's father was an impoverished Florentine gentleman who was given a temporary post at Caprese by the Medici (1474–75), where Michelangelo, his second son, was born. In 1488 he was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio for three years. Other early influences included Giotto, who introduced a new naturalism to his depictions of the human figure; and Masaccio, the first painter to use the scientific principles of perspective, whose frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel achieved an enormous sculptural quality. Chosen as one of the young artists whom Lorenzo de' Medici allowed to work in the school and the collection of classical sculpture in the Medici gardens in Florence, under the custodian, Bertoldo, Michelangelo was encouraged to develop his natural gift and love for sculpture. In rivalry with the antique, he produced the Head of a Faun (c. 1489; Palazzo Vecchio, Florence) and the relief, Battle of Centaurs and Lapiths (Casa Buonarotti, Florence). The Medicean atmosphere of Platonic philosophy and classical study, typical of the Renaissance, made a lasting impression on him, though after the death of Lorenzo in 1492, and in the now uneasy political atmosphere of Florence, he was seized by a presentiment of disaster, and fled to Bologna. He spent a year in Bologna and, in 1496, went to Rome, aged 21. During this period, he produced a number of sculptures, including Bacchus (1496–98; Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence) and Pietà (1498–99; St Peter's, Rome); and paintings such as the Madonna and Child with St John and Angels (c. 1495) and Entombment (c. 1501; both National Gallery, London).

Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1501, where he carved the towering David, from a block of Carrara marble that had been discarded as spoilt. However, he did not abandon painting altogether, producing works such as Holy Family (1503; Uffizi Gallery, Florence), executed for his and Raphael's patron Angelo Doni. He was also commissioned to paint a large fresco in the council hall of the new Florentine Republic as a companion piece to the Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo chose an incident from the Battle of Cascina during the Pisan War, when Florentine soldiers had been surprised by the enemy while bathing. Neither artist finished their frescoes, though Michelangelo, while he seems to have disliked Leonardo personally, may well have learned from the latter's cartoon a new energy of movement and intensity of expression. However, in 1503 Michelangelo was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II to work on the famous tomb on which he was to toil at intervals during 40 years.

Although he began work on the tomb, the Pope decided that the vaulting of the Sistine Chapel should be decorated, and the architect Bramante suggested that the commission should be given to Michelangelo. It was presumed this was out of jealousy, Bramante hoping that Michelangelo would fail in the undertaking or produce a minor work. Though reluctant, Michelangelo accepted the challenge, and in an astonishingly short space of time, working without assistants and under difficult conditions, painted his epic ceiling between 1508 and 1512.

He went back to sculpture, producing The Dying Slave and The Bound Slave (both 1513–1516; Louvre, Paris), and working on Pope Julius's tomb. Dubbed ‘the tragedy of the tomb’, the sculpture was finally completed in 1545, though on a less ambitious scale than had been planned, only the figure of Moses being the artist's own work. He was commissioned in 1520 by Pope Clement VII, to design the Medici sepulchral chapel in San Lorenzo, Florence. This, with its famous figures of Day and Night, Morning and Evening, was finished in 1535. In 1534 he was required by Clement VII to devote himself to painting the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, which had previously been decorated by Perugino, a commission urgently affirmed by Clement's successor, Pope Paul III. He produced the Last Judgement over a period of six years, 1535–41.

Two frescoes in the Capella Paolina representing the Martyrdom of St Peter and the Conversion of St Paul, 1549, were his last paintings.

To the wonderful list of Michelangelo's achievements must be added his superb drawings, the earlier examples being executed with a pen, the later ones with black and red chalk; as well as the sonnets, particularly those addressed to Vittoria Colonna, widow of the Marquis of Pescara, whose friendship was the artist's great solace, her death in 1547 leaving him disconsolate. Though Michelangelo died in Rome, he was reburied in Santa Croce, Florence, with every honour.