Michelangelo Buonarroti
Encyclopaedia Britannica
born March 6, 1475, Caprese, Republic of Florence [Italy]
died Feb. 18, 1564, Rome, Papal States
in full Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni Italian Renaissance
sculptor, painter, architect, and poet who exerted an unparalleled
influence on the development of Western art.
I
Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime,
and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists
of all times. A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and
architecture rank among the most famous in existence. Although the
frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Vatican) are
probably the best known of his works today, the artist thought of
himself primarily as a sculptor. His practice of several arts, however,
was not unusual in his time, when all of them were thought of as based
on design, or drawing. Michelangelo worked in marble sculpture all his
life and in the other arts only at certain periods. The high regard for
the Sistine ceiling is partly a reflection of the greater attention paid
to painting in the 20th century and partly, too, of the fact that it,
unlike many of the artist's works in the other media, was completed.
A side effect of Michelangelo's fame in his lifetime was that his career
was more fully documented than that of any artist of the time or
earlier. He was the first artist whose biography was published while he
was alive, and there were two rival biographies. The first was the final
chapter in the series of artists' lives (1550) by the painter and
architect Giorgio Vasari. It was the only chapter on a living artist and
explicitly presented Michelangelo's works as the culminating perfection
of art, surpassing the efforts of all those before him. Despite such an
encomium, Michelangelo was not entirely pleased and arranged for his
assistant Ascanio Condivi to write a brief separate book (1553);
probably based on the artist's own spoken comments, this account shows
him as he wished to appear. After Michelangelo's death Vasari in a
second edition (1568) offered a rebuttal. While scholars have often
preferred the authority of Condivi, Vasari's lively writing, the
importance of his book as a whole, and its frequent reprintingin many
languages have made it the most usual basis of popular ideas.
Michelangelo's fame also led to the preservation of countless mementos,
including hundreds of letters, sketches, and poems, again more than of
any contemporary. Yet despite the enormous benefit that has accrued from
all this, in controversial matters often only Michelangelo's side of an
argument is known.
Early life and works
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born to a family that had for several
generations been small-scale bankers in Florence but had in the case of
the artist's father failed to maintain its status. The father had only
occasional government jobs, and at the time of Michelangelo's birth he
was administrator of the small dependent town of Caprese. A few months
later, however, the family returned to its permanent residence in
Florence. It was something of a downward social step to become an
artist, and Michelangelo became an apprentice relatively late, at 13,
perhaps after overcoming his father's objections. He was apprenticed to
the city's most prominent painter, Domenico Ghirlandajo, for a
three-year term, but he left after one year, having (Condivi recounts)
nothing more to learn. Several drawings, copies of figures by
Ghirlandajo and older great painters of Florence, Giotto and Masaccio,
survive from this stage; such copying was standard for apprentices, but
few examples are known to survive. Obviously talented, he was taken
under the wing of the ruler of the city, Lorenzo de' Medici, known as
the Magnificent. Lorenzo surrounded himself at table with poets and
intellectuals, and Michelangelo was included. More important, he had
access to the Medici art collection, which was dominated by fragments of
ancient Roman statuary. (Lorenzo was not such a patron of contemporary
art as legend has made him; such modern art as he owned was to ornament
his house or make political statements.)
