Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni born March 6, 1475 near Arezzo, in Caprese, Tuscany. Died February 18, 1564 at the age of 88 in Rome. He apprenticed with Domenico Ghirlandaio. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.
Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Michelangolo Pieta and the 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 Sistine Chapel ceiling on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Later in life he designed the dome of St. Peter?s Basilica in the same city and revolutionised classical architecture with his use of the Giant order of Pilaster.
In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, two biographies were published of him during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. 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 the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance, Mannerism.
Pieta: Carved in 1499 when Michelangelo was 24 years of age.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/225px-Michelangelo27s_Pieta_5450_cr.jpg
Statue of David, carved in 1504. It is of Carrara marble.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/225px-Michelangelos_David.jpg
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II. He was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. Under the patronage of the Pope, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks. Because of these interruptions, Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years. The tomb, of which the central feature is Michelangelo's Moses, was never finished to Michelangelo's satisfaction. It is located in the San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.
The major interruption on the tomb was the commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508?1512). According to Michelangelo's own account, reproduced in contemporary biographies, Bramante and Raphael convinced the Pope to commission Michelangelo in a medium not familiar to the artist, in order that he might be diverted from his preference for sculpture into fresco painting, and thus suffer from unfavorable comparisons with his rival Raphael. However, this story is discounted by modern historians on the grounds of contemporary evidence, and may be merely a reflection of the artist's own perspective.
Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the 12 Apostles, but lobbied for a different and more complex scheme, representing Creation, the Downfall of Man and the Promise of Salvation through the prophets and Genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel which represents much of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.
The composition eventually contained over 300 figures and had at its centre nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's Creation of the Earth; God's Creation of Humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of Humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of the Jesus. They are seven Prophet of Israel and five Sibyl, prophetic women of the Classical world.
Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are the Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, the Prophet Isaiah and the Cumaean Sibyl. Around the windows are painted the ancestors of Christ.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/225px-Lightmatter_Sistine_Chapel_ce.jpg
Michelangelos Moses: In 1513 Pope Julius II died and his successor Pope Leo X, a Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the fa?ade of the Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly. The three years he spent in creating drawings and models for the facade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project, were among the most frustrating in his career, as work was abruptly cancelled by his financially-strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a facade to this day.
Apparently not the least embarrassed by this turnabout, the Medici later came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze.
Fortunately for posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realized. Though still incomplete, it is the best example we have of the integration of the artist's sculptural and architectural vision, since Michelangelo created both the major sculptures as well as the interior plan. Ironically the most prominent tombs are those of two rather obscure Medici who died young, a son and grandson of Lorenzo. Lorenzo Medici himself is buried in an unfinished and comparatively unimpressive tomb on one of the side walls of the chapel, not given a free-standing monument, as originally intended
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/180px-Michaelangelo27s_Moses.jpg
Last Judgment Fresco: The Fresco of The Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by Pope Clement VII, who died shortly after assigning the commission. Paul III was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project. Michelangelo labored on the project from 1534 to October 1541. The work is massive and spans the entire wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. The Last Judgment is a depiction of the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse; where the souls of humanity rise and are assigned to their various fates, as judged by Christ, surrounded by the Saints.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/200px-Last_judgement.jpg
(( Credits: All photos and data are taken from Wikipedia ))
Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Michelangolo Pieta and the 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 Sistine Chapel ceiling on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Later in life he designed the dome of St. Peter?s Basilica in the same city and revolutionised classical architecture with his use of the Giant order of Pilaster.
In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, two biographies were published of him during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. 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 the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance, Mannerism.
Pieta: Carved in 1499 when Michelangelo was 24 years of age.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/225px-Michelangelo27s_Pieta_5450_cr.jpg
Statue of David, carved in 1504. It is of Carrara marble.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/225px-Michelangelos_David.jpg
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II. He was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. Under the patronage of the Pope, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks. Because of these interruptions, Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years. The tomb, of which the central feature is Michelangelo's Moses, was never finished to Michelangelo's satisfaction. It is located in the San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.
The major interruption on the tomb was the commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508?1512). According to Michelangelo's own account, reproduced in contemporary biographies, Bramante and Raphael convinced the Pope to commission Michelangelo in a medium not familiar to the artist, in order that he might be diverted from his preference for sculpture into fresco painting, and thus suffer from unfavorable comparisons with his rival Raphael. However, this story is discounted by modern historians on the grounds of contemporary evidence, and may be merely a reflection of the artist's own perspective.
Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the 12 Apostles, but lobbied for a different and more complex scheme, representing Creation, the Downfall of Man and the Promise of Salvation through the prophets and Genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel which represents much of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.
The composition eventually contained over 300 figures and had at its centre nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's Creation of the Earth; God's Creation of Humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of Humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of the Jesus. They are seven Prophet of Israel and five Sibyl, prophetic women of the Classical world.
Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are the Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, the Prophet Isaiah and the Cumaean Sibyl. Around the windows are painted the ancestors of Christ.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/225px-Lightmatter_Sistine_Chapel_ce.jpg
Michelangelos Moses: In 1513 Pope Julius II died and his successor Pope Leo X, a Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the fa?ade of the Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly. The three years he spent in creating drawings and models for the facade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project, were among the most frustrating in his career, as work was abruptly cancelled by his financially-strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a facade to this day.
Apparently not the least embarrassed by this turnabout, the Medici later came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze.
Fortunately for posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realized. Though still incomplete, it is the best example we have of the integration of the artist's sculptural and architectural vision, since Michelangelo created both the major sculptures as well as the interior plan. Ironically the most prominent tombs are those of two rather obscure Medici who died young, a son and grandson of Lorenzo. Lorenzo Medici himself is buried in an unfinished and comparatively unimpressive tomb on one of the side walls of the chapel, not given a free-standing monument, as originally intended
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/180px-Michaelangelo27s_Moses.jpg
Last Judgment Fresco: The Fresco of The Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by Pope Clement VII, who died shortly after assigning the commission. Paul III was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project. Michelangelo labored on the project from 1534 to October 1541. The work is massive and spans the entire wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. The Last Judgment is a depiction of the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse; where the souls of humanity rise and are assigned to their various fates, as judged by Christ, surrounded by the Saints.
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj171/Azjahh/Museums/Art%20Museum/200px-Last_judgement.jpg
(( Credits: All photos and data are taken from Wikipedia ))