Michelangelo Essay, Research Paper
During the dates 1475-1564 there were
many famous painters working all around the world. One of
which was Michelangelo. He painted and sculpted many
famous items that are still talked about today. Michelangelo
led a very buisy life, as of which you will be reading about
today. Michelangelo was born in 1475 in a small village of
Caprese near Arezzo At the age of 13 michelangelo?s
father Ludovico Buonarroti placed michelangelo in the
workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio through
connections with the ruling Medici family. About two years
later michelangelo studied at the sculpture school in the
Medici gardens. Shortly thereafter he was invited into the
household of the Magnincent, Lorenzo de?Medici. Where
he had an oppertunity to converse with younger Medici,
which later became pope Leo X. As he was also
introduced to humanists as Marsilio Ficino and the poet
Politian, who were frequent visiters. By the age of 16
Michelangelo had produced two relief sculptures ,the battle
of the Centaurs and the Madonna of the stairs, which
showed that he had achieved a very personal style at a very
early age. His patron Lorenzo died in 1492; two years later
Michelangelo fled Florence,when the Medici were
temporarily expelled. For a while he was settled in
Bologna, where in 1494 and 1495 he sculpted several
marble statuettes for the arca (shrine) di San Domenico.
Michelangelo went to Rome, where he was able to
examine many newly unearthed classical statues and ruins.
He soon produced his first large sculpture the over life size
Bacchus in 1496-1498. One of the few works of pagan
rather than Christian subject made by the master, it rivaled
ancient statuary, the highest mark of admiration in
Renaissance Rome. At about the samr time period
Michelangelo did the marble Pietа in 1498. It was finished
in 1500. It was one of the most famous works of art, the
Pietа was probubly finished before Michelangelo was 25
years old, and is the only piece of work he ever signed. In
the piece the youthfull Mary is shown seated majestically,
holding the dead Christ across her lap, it was a theme that
was borrowed from northern European art. Instead of
revealing extreme grief, Mary is restrained, and her
expression is one of resignation. In this work, Michelangelo
summerizes the sculptural innovations of his 15th-century
predecessors such as Donatello, while ushering in the new
monumentality of the high Renaissance style of the
16th-century. The high point of Michelangelo?s early style
is the gigantic(4.34m/14.24ft) marble David, which was
produced between the years 1501and 1504, after returning
to florence.The old testament hero is depicted by
Michelangelo as a lithe nude youth, muscular and alert,
looking of into the distance as if he was sizing up the enemy
Goliath, whom he has not yet been encountered with. The
fiery intensity of David?s facial expression is termed
terribilitа, a feature characteristic of many of
Michelangelo?s figures and of his own personality. David,
was Michelangelo?s most famous sculpture, it became the
symbol of Florence and originally was placed in the Piazza
della signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine
town hall. With this statue, Michelangelo proved to his
contemporaries that he not only surpassed all modern
artists, but also the Greeks and the Romans, by infusing
formal beauty with powerful expressiveness and meaning.
While still occupied with David,Michelangelo was given an
oppertnuity to demonstrate his ability as a painter with the
commission of a mural, the Battle of Cascina, destined for
the Sala dei Cinqueccento of the Palazzo Vecchio,
opposite of Leonardo?s Battle of Anghiari. Neither
Leonardo or Michelangelo carried there assignment
beyond the stage of a cartoon, a full-scale preparatory
drawing. Michelangelo created a series of nude and clothed
figures in a wide variety of posesand positions that were a
prelude to his next majos project, the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel in the Vatican. In 1505 the Pope Julius II recalled
Michelangelo to Rome for two commissions. The most
important one was for the frescoecs of the Sistine Chapel
ceiling. Working high above the chapel floor, lying on his
back on scaffolding painting for 5 years. Michelangelo
painted, between 1508-1512, some of the finest pictorial
images of all time. On the vault of the of the papal chapel,
he divised an intricate system of decoration that included
nine scenes from the book of Genesis, begining with the
God Seperating 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 Testement
subjects, and by the studies and cartoons, devising scores
of figure types and poses. These awesome, mightly images,
demonstrating Michelangelo?s masterly understanding of
human anatomy and movement, changed the course of
painting in the West. Before the assignment of the Sistine
Chapel ceiling in 1505, Michelangelo had been
commissioned by Julius II to produce his tomb, which was
planned to be the most magnificent of Christian times. It
was to be located in the new Basilica of Saint Peter?s, then
while under construction. Michelangelo enthusiastically
went ahead with this challenging project, which was to
include more than 40 figures, spending monthes in the
quarries to obtain the necessary marble. Due to a shortage
of money, however, the pope ordered Michelangelo to put
aside the tomb project in favor of painting the Sistine
Chapel ceiling. When Michelangelo went back to work on
the tomb, he redesigned it on a much more modest scale.
Nevertheless, Michelangelo made some of his finest
sculpture for the Julius tomb, including the Moses(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 in
its hands the tablets of the Ten Commandments, his long
beard entwined in his powerfull hands. He looks as if he
was communicating with god. Two other statues, The
Bound Slave and The Dying Slave (both structured in
1510-1513) demonstrate Michelangelo?s approach to
carving. He left both statues unfinished either because he
was satisfied with them as is, or because he no longer
planned to use them. The project for the Julius Tomb
required architectural planning, but Michelangelo?s activity
as an architect began in 1519, with the plan for the facade
of the Church fo San Lorenzo in Florence, where he had
once again moved to. In the 1520?s he also designed the
Laurentian Library and its elegant entrance hall adjoining
San Lorenzo. After the completion of these oblects
Michelangelo took as a starting point thee wall articulation
of his Florintine Predecessers, but he infused it with the
same surging energy that characterizes his sculpting and
painting?s. Michelangelo used motifs-columns,pediments,
and brackets- for a personal and expressive purpose. He
participated in the 1527-1529 war against the Medici and
supervised Florentine fortifications. While living in Florence
for this extended period, Michelangelo also undertook the
commission of the Medici Tomb?s between 1519 and
1534 for the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo. His design
called for two large wall tombs facing each other across the
high, domed room. One was intended for Lorenzo de?
Medici, Duke of Urbino; and the other for Giuliano de?
Medici; Duke of Nemours. The two complex tombs were
concieved as representing opposite types: The Lorenzo, the
contemplative, introspective personality; the Giuliano, the
active, extroverted one. He carved magnificent nude
personifications of Dawn and Dusk beneath the seated
Lorenzo, Day and night beneath Giuliano; reclining river
gods were planned to be carved out on the bottom. The
Medici Tombs were worked on lond after Michelangelo
went back to Rome in 1534, although he never returned to
his birth city. In Rome, in 1536, Michelangelo went to
work on the Last Judgement for the alter wall of the Sistine
Chapel, which was finished by Michelangelo in 1541. It
was the largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts
Judgement day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts into
motion the inevitable seperation, 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 a decade later, as
the cultural climate became more conservative.
Michelangelo painted his own image in the flayed skin of
Saint Bartholomew. Although he was also given another
painting commission, which was the decoration of the
Pauline Chapel in the 1540?s, his main energies were
directed toward architecture during this phase of his life. In
1538-1539 Michelangelo recieved new plans for the
remodeling of the buildings surrounding the Campoidoglio
the capitol on the Capitoline Hill, the civic and political
heart of the city of Rome. Although Michelangelo?s
program was not carried out until the late 1550?s and not
finnished until the late 17th century, the Campoidoglio was
designed around an oval shape, with the famous bronze
equestrian statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in
the center. At the same time that he preserved traditional
Roman monumentality, M Michelangelo brought new unity
to the public building facade for the Palazzo dei
Conservatori. Michelangelo?s crowning achevement as an
architect was his work at Saint Peter?s Basilica, where he
was made chief architect in 1546. According to Donato
Bramante the Dome of Saint Peter?s Basilica would be
constructed from his plans only, but Michelangelo ultimately
became responsible for the altar end of the building on the
exterior and for the final form of its dome. 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 sculptures were
impressed by his treatment of the human figure: Raphael,
Annibale Carracci, Jacopo da pontormo, Rosso
Fiorentino, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Titan. His dome
for Saint Peter?s became the symbol of authority, as well as
the model, for domes all over the Western world; the
majorityof state capitol buildingsin the united states, as well
as the Capitol building in Washington D.C., are dirived
from it. Michelangelo died in 1564 and his body was
placed in a fine monument in the church of Santa Croce. To
conclude, Michelangelo led a long and very talented life. As
a painter sculpture, poet and architect. He has many
famous pieces of work still known and talked about today,
all around the world. Many people knew him and loved
him and those who didn?t know him personaly, knew of
him.