Michelangelo Buonarroti

From Encyclopediak

Michelangelo Buonarroti, Mi" kel an ji lo Bwo" narrotee, 1475-1564, one of the most conspicuous figures in the history of art, was born at Caprese, the son of a poor but proud Florentine gentleman. He was a pupil of Ghirlandajo, and his art was influenced by the works of Donatello and Signorelli and the antique marbles in the gardens of his patron Lorenzo de Medici also by the poets and scholars of Lorenzo's brilliant court, by Savonarola, and by the teachings of Dante. His earliest important extant works are a Pieta St. Peter's, Rome Virgin and Child Bruges and Davic Florence, the last a triumph of tech nical mastery. In 1508 Pope Julius corn missioned him to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican, a monumental work, which engaged the artist four years. This and the Last Judgment, painted in the same chapel many years later, are his only important work with the brush. In many respects they are the most important frescoes in the world today, and yet the artist had declared that he was no painter. It was as a sculptor that he desired to be known. Here his unparalleled knowledge of the human form, and the grandeur and majesty of his style found full expression. The number of his extant finished works is very small. Several pieces, which he is known to have executed, have either been destroyed or have otherwise disappeared. In the period of his greatness he was overwhelmed with commissions, few of which he could undertake. Many of his gigantic schemes were never carried out, owing partly to the turbulent state of the country, the vacillations of his patrons and his own physical limitations, which made it impossible for him to execute with his hand all that the creative impetuosity of his mind imposed and with his fitful temper he could never keep assistants. The most important of his works are two tombs, one for Pope Julius II and the other for the Medici family at Florence. Neither was ever finished, but details of the Julian monument, the seated figure of Moses, representing the patriarch, in a moment of righteous wrath, and two Slaves, intended as part of the frieze, are among his most impressive creations. The former is in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome, the latter in the Louvre. The architectural repository for the Medici tomb was designed and carried out as to lighting and arrangements according to the artist's plans, and the general effect is one of sublimity and grandeur. The tomb contains two colossal, symbolic figures representing Lorenzo and Guiliano de Medici, which occupy two niches above groups of reclining figures resting on the sarcophagus and symbolic of Dawn, Evening, Day and Night. In the last years of his life Michelangelo devoted himself entirely to architecture he was appointed architect to St. Peter's in 1547, and designed the present dome, which was completed in accordance with his plans after his death. He died in Rome, the last great Florentine of the High Renaissance. See Paintings, The Twelve Great.,