Michelangelo (1475

Michelangelo (1475-1564) Essay Michelangelo (1475-1564), arguably one of the most inspired creators in the history of art and, with Leonardo da Vinci, the most potent force in the Italian High Renaissance. As a sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, he exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent Western art in general. A Florentine although born March 6, 1475, in the small village of Caprese near Arezzo Michelangelo continued to have a deep attachment to his city, its art, and its culture throughout his long life. He spent the greater part of his adulthood in Rome, employed by the popes; characteristically, owever, he left instructions that he be buried in Florence, and his body was placed there in a fine monument in the church of Santa Croce. Early Life in Florence Michelangelos father, a Florentine official named Ludovico Buonarroti with connections to the ruling Medici family, placed his 13-year-old son in the workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. After about two years, Michelangelo studied at the sculpture school in the Medici gardens and shortly thereafter was invited into the household of Lorenzo de Medici, the Magnificent. There he had an opportunity to converse with the younger Medicis, wo of whom later became popes (Leo X and Clement VII). He also became acquainted with such humanists as Marsilio Ficino and the poet Angelo Poliziano, who were frequent visitors. Michelangelo produced at least two relief sculptures by the time he was 16 years old, the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of the Stairs (both 1489-92, Casa Buonarroti, Florence), which show that he had achieved a 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. He settled for a time in Bologna, where in 1494 and 1495 he executed everal marble statuettes for the Arca (Shrine) di San Domenico in the Church of San Domenico. First Roman Sojourn Michelangelo then went to Rome, where he was able to examine many newly unearthed classical statues and Ruins. He soon produced his first large-scale sculpture, the over-life-size Bacchus (1496-98, Bargello, Florence). One of the few works of pagan rather than Christian subject matter made by the master, it rivaled ancient Statuary, the highest mark of admiration in Renaissance Rome. At about the same time, Michelangelo also did the marble Piet (1498-1500), still in its original place in Saint Peters Basilica. One of the most famous works of art, the Piet was probably finished before Michelangelo was 25 years old and it is the only work he ever signed. The youthful Mary is shown seated majestically, holding the dead Christ across her lap, a theme borrowed from northern European art. Instead of revealing extreme grief, Mary is restrained, and her expression is one of resignation. In this work, Michelangelo summarizes 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. First Return to Florence The high oint of Michelangelos early style is the gigantic (4. 34 m/14. 24 ft) marble David (Accademia, Florence), which he produced between 1501 and 1504, after returning to Florence. The Old Testament hero is depicted by Michelangelo as a lithe nude youth, muscular and alert, looking off into the distance as if sizing up the enemy Goliath, whom he has not yet encountered. The fiery intensity of Davids facial expression is termed terribilit, a feature characteristic of many of Michelangelos figures and of his own personality. David, Michelangelos most famous sculpture, became the symbol of Florence and originally was placed n 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 Romans, by infusing formal beauty with powerful expressiveness and meaning. While still occupied with the David, Michelangelo was given an opportunity to demonstrate his ability as a painter with the commission of a mural, the Battle of Cascina, destined for the Sala dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio, opposite Leonardos Battle of Anghiari. Neither artist carried his assignment beyond the tage of a cartoon, a full-scale preparatory drawing. Naming of the Parts EssayThe two complex tombs were conceived as representing opposite types: the Lorenzo, the contemplative, introspective personality; the Giuliano, the active, extroverted one. He placed magnificent nude personifications of Dawn and Dusk beneath the seated Lorenzo, Day and Night beneath Giuliano; reclining river gods (never executed) were planned for the bottom. Work on the Medici Tombs continued long after Michelangelo went back to Rome in 1534, although he never returned to his beloved native city. The Last Judgment In Rome, in 1536, Michelangelo was at ork on the Last Judgment for the alter wall of the Sistine Chapel, which he finished in 1541. The largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts Judgment Day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts into motion the inevitable separation, 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 (who was dubbed the breeches-maker) a decade later, as the cultural climate became more conservative. Michelangelo painted his own image in the layed skin of St. Bartholomew. Although he was also given another painting commission, the decoration of the Pauline Chapel in the 1540s, his main energies were directed toward architecture during this phase of his life. The Campidoglio In 1538-39 plans were under way for the remodeling of the buildings surrounding the Campidoglio (Capitol) on the Capitoline Hill, the civic and political heart of the city of Rome. Although Michelangelos program was not carried out until the late 1550s and not finished until the 17th century, he designed the Campidoglio around an oval shape, with the famous antique bronze equestrian tatue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in the center. For the Palazzo dei Conservatori he brought a new unity to the public building facade, at the same time that he preserved traditional Roman monumentality. Dome of St. Peters Basilica Michelangelos crowning achievement as an architect was his work at St. Peters Basilica, where he was made chief architect in 1546. The building was being constructed according to Donato Bramantes plan, but Michelangelo ultimately became responsible for the altar end of the building on the exterior and for the final form of its dome. Michelangelos Achievements During his long lifetime, Michelangelo was an intimate of princes and popes, from Lorenzo de Medici to Leo X, Clement VIII, and Pius III, as well as cardinals, painters, and poets. Neither easy to get along with nor easy to understand, he expressed his view of himself and the world even more directly in his poetry than in the other arts. Much of his verse deals with art and the hardships he underwent, or with Neoplatonic philosophy and personal relationships. The great Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto wrote succinctly of this famous artist: Michael more than ortal, divine angel. Indeed, Michelangelo was widely awarded the epithetdivine because of his extraordinary accomplishments. Two generations of Italian painters and sculptors were impressed by his treatment of the human figure: Raphael, Annibale Carracci, Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Titian. His dome for St. Peters became the symbol of authority, as well as the model, for domes all over the Western world; the majority of state capitol buildings in the U. S. , as well as the Capitol in Washington, D. C. , are derived from it.