Michelangelo << `my` kuhl AN juh `loh` or `mihk` uhl AN juh `loh` >> (1475-1564) was one of the most famous artists in history. He was mainly interested in creating large marble statues, but his endless creative energy also led him to become a great painter and architect as well as a poet. He was also one of the most famous people of his time and a great leader of the Italian Renaissance, a period marked by a rebirth of interest in the art and learning of ancient Greece and Rome.
Michelangelo is best known for his treatment of the human body in painting and sculpture. His figures convey a sense of grandeur and power, and arouse strong emotions in many spectators. In size, strength, and emotional intensity, these figures go beyond real people. Michelangelo’s figures are both animated and restrained, and seem to possess great spiritual energy. His work presses toward the extremes of heroism and tragedy but is never false or artificial.
Early life.
Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475. His full name was Michelangelo Buonarroti. He came from a respectable Florence family and was born in the village of Caprese, where his father was a government agent. Michelangelo had a brief classical education that dealt with the literature, art, and life of ancient Greece and Rome. When he was 12 years old, Michelangelo became an apprentice to the most popular painter in Florence, Domenico Ghirlandajo.
Before his apprenticeship was completed, Michelangelo stopped painting and began working as a sculptor under the guidance of a pupil of the sculptor Donatello. Michelangelo attracted the support of the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici, who invited the young artist to stay at his palace. Michelangelo’s earliest surviving sculpture is a small unfinished relief of a battle, done when he was about 16. This work shows the obvious influence of ancient Roman marble sculpture belonging to Lorenzo. But the relief also shows the force and movement that became typical of Michelangelo’s style. During these years, he began the study of anatomy.
After the Medici family lost power in 1494, Michelangelo began traveling. He lived in Rome from 1496 to 1501. There he had his first marked success when he carved in marble a life-sized statue of the Roman wine god Bacchus. At 23, Michelangelo carved a version of the traditional Pieta subject, the dead Christ in the lap of the mourning Virgin Mary. Both figures are larger than life-sized. This statue, now in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, established him as a leading sculptor. The work was plainer and less decorative than most statues of the time, and thus looked stronger and more solemn. 
Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1501 and remained there until 1505. He may have gone there to compete for the right to work on a large piece of marble that had been abandoned by earlier sculptors working on the Cathedral of Florence. The marble became Michelangelo’s David (1504), one of the most famous works in the history of art.
The Florentines had planned to put the statue high in the air on the Cathedral of Florence. But they decided instead to place this great work of art at eye level in their main public square, and it became a symbol of the new republic that had replaced Medici rule.
The new democratic government of Florence then asked Michelangelo and the city’s other outstanding artist, Leonardo da Vinci, to create large battle scenes for the walls of the city hall. Michelangelo probably never started to paint the wall, but his design for the work is known to us through his sketches and through copies by other artists. It displayed his expert ability to render human anatomy. It was during these years that Michelangelo formed the basis of the style in which he would work for the rest of his life.
From about 1505 on, Michelangelo devoted nearly all his time to large projects. In his enthusiasm for creating grand and powerful works of art, he accepted projects that were far too large for him to complete. The first one was a tomb ordered by Pope Julius II that was to include 40 marble statues. The artist accepted the job in 1505 and ended the project unsuccessfully 40 years later.
The Sistine Chapel.
Julius II was a patron of the arts with a sweeping imagination equal to Michelangelo’s. Julius gave Michelangelo a more practical commission, painting the vault (arched ceiling) of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. This project became Michelangelo’s most famous work.
The Sistine Chapel is where major papal ceremonies take place. The chapel was built by Pope Sixtus IV, Julius II’s uncle, and was decorated during the 1480’s with paintings by some of the greatest artists of the time, including Sandro Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, and Perugino. All of its decoration together shows the history of the world according to the Bible. The earlier painters showed the lives of Moses and Jesus Christ and the sequence of the popes. Michelangelo’s contribution to the project was the grandest of all.
On the lowest part of the vault of the Sistine Chapel as well as on the upper walls, over the arched windows, Michelangelo painted The Ancestors of Christ. In the corners, he portrayed stories of the salvation of the Jewish people, such as David and Goliath. 
The highest part of the vault was originally painted blue with gold stars, symbolizing heaven. Michelangelo changed this treatment. Above the Ancestors, he painted great thrones in which are seated prophets believed to have foretold the coming of a Messiah (savior). Male prophets of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible alternate with sibyls, female prophets of ancient times. The series of prophets ends above the high altar of the chapel with Jonah, who survived after three days inside a whale, an event that foretells Christ’s death and Resurrection.
Above the thrones of the prophets are nude figures, called ignudi, who hold bronze-colored disks with stories taken mostly from the Books of Kings. Michelangelo covered the very top of the vault with nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, including three scenes portraying the creation of the universe, three showing the creation of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace, and three illustrating the story of Noah.
Michelangelo, forced against his own wishes by Julius to undertake the huge task, began the ceiling in 1508 and completed it in 1512. He used a technique called fresco, applying the paint to damp, freshly laid plaster and working quickly before the plaster dried. He began at the entrance and worked toward the altar, starting with the scenes from Noah’s life and working backward in time to the beginning of creation. Michelangelo painted the ceiling from a scaffolding, standing up, not lying on his back as historians once thought. During this period, he wrote a satirical poem in which he complained of a stiff neck and of paint dripping into his eyes. In the margin of the page, he drew a caricature of himself reaching up to paint.
At first, Michelangelo approached the task in a style resembling his earlier works. But he soon gained confidence and developed new ways of showing tension and power. The last frescoes he painted, which include The Separation of Light from Darkness and the portrait of Jonah, are much richer and more active compositions. The figures in these last paintings are also larger and freer in execution.
When the frescoes of the Sistine ceiling were cleaned in the 1980’s, restorers found that Michelangelo had painted in much brighter colors than had been realized. The brilliance of the colors makes the paintings visible from a great distance. The top of the vault is about 70 feet (21 meters) above the floor.
The tomb of Julius II.
After he had finished the ceiling, Michelangelo resumed work on the pope’s tomb. He carved three famous figures that resemble the painted prophets and decorative figures on the Sistine ceiling. These figures are Moses and two prisoners, sometimes called The Heroic Captive and The Dying Captive, completed by 1516. The figure of Moses, who seems to be filled with terrible anger, was later used as the centerpiece of the tomb. This statue was finally placed in the Church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome. The figures of the two captives may symbolize lands conquered by Julius II or arts and sciences left without support after his death. One of them struggles violently against his bonds as the other languishes and seems to submit to defeat.
The Medici Chapel.
Michelangelo spent the years from 1515 to 1534 working mainly for the Medici family, who had regained control of Florence. He designed and carved tombs for two Medici princes and also designed the Medici Chapel, in which the tombs are placed. Michelangelo left the chapel incomplete when he moved away from Florence in 1534.
Michelangelo also designed the architecture of the Medici Chapel. He planned the walls like a carved relief, with projections and hollows and long, narrow shapes to give an elongated effect. This approach, resembling carved architecture, is carried further in the entrance hall and staircase to the Laurentian library in Florence, which he designed between 1524 and 1559.
The Last Judgment.
Michelangelo was sometimes torn between loyalty to the Florentine republic and loyalty to the Medici family, his patrons. In the late 1520’s, the Medici family once more lost power in Florence. The city fortified itself against an attempt by the family to regain control. Michelangelo served as director of fortifications. In 1530, the Medici family took the city by force, and Michelangelo went into hiding to avoid arrest. However, Pope Clement VII, himself a member of the Medici family, sent word to Florence that Michelangelo was to be treated well and allowed to continue working on the Medici tombs. Michelangelo resumed his work, but he left Florence in 1534. He never returned to the city, though he was buried there.
Michelangelo settled in Rome, where he worked for Pope Paul III. From 1536 to 1541, Michelangelo painted the fresco of The Last Judgment for the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, destroying some of his earlier Ancestors of Christ to do so. In a single scene covering the entire wall, Michelangelo showed the resurrection and judgment of humanity.
At the top of The Last Judgment are wingless angels with the cross upon which Christ died. Beneath them, the blessed gather in heaven. In the center, Christ raises His right arm. The Virgin Mary, who intercedes for souls, sits beside Him. In response to Christ’s commanding gesture, the world below comes to life. On the left, tombs open and the dead—some skeletons, others in grave shrouds—rise toward heaven. To the right, the damned tumble or are dragged into hell. Hell is filled with demons and is ruled over by Minos, the mythical king of Crete who imprisoned a monster known as the Minotaur. A large snake coils around Minos. The depiction of hell is based on The Divine Comedy (1321), a famous poem by the Florentine writer Dante Alighieri. Michelangelo is supposed to have known the lengthy poem by heart.
The Last Judgment caused great controversy, and Michelangelo was very disturbed by the reaction to his work. Some critics objected that Christ was shown inappropriately. The fresco was bitterly criticized for its display of nudity. In fact, draperies were later added to many of the figures by one of Michelangelo’s followers. In the early 1990’s, when the fresco was cleaned and repaired, restorers removed some of the draperies.
Later years.
Michelangelo devoted much time after 1546 to architecture and poetry. In 1546, Pope Paul III appointed him supervising architect of St. Peter’s Basilica, one of Julius II’s unfinished projects. Michelangelo worked on the church without salary. By the time he died on Feb. 18, 1564, construction had reached the lower part of the dome, which was finished by another architect. After 1538, he planned a square for the Civic Center of Rome and the buildings facing it. The square is shaped like a trapezoid, a four-sided figure with two parallel sides of unequal length. The square and the oval design at its center symbolize Rome as the center of the world.
Michelangelo’s last paintings, finished when he was 75 years old, were frescoes in the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican. They show The Conversion of Saint Paul (1545) and The Crucifixion of Saint Peter (1550). Although they are large, complicated designs like the Sistine Chapel paintings, they are graver, more still and inward. Michelangelo became deeply religious in his last years, during which he made devotional drawings comparable to the Rondanini Pieta. He also wrote some of his finest poetry during his old age.
