Michelangelo, his Paintings, and Sculptures

Michelangelo was one of the most inspirational and talented artists in modern history. Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany Italy.

At age of 6, Michelangelo was sent to a Florence grammar school but he showed no interest in schooling. His father realized he had no interest in family's financial business and agreed to send him, to the painter Ghirlandaio to be trained as an apprentice at the age of 13. Michelangelo learned the technique of Fresco and draftsmanship (. a person who draws plans and sketches)

 He was the first artist who was recognized during his life time. He is also the first western artist whose biography was published when he is still alive. Two biographies for him was written, one was by Giorgio Vasari, who praised Michelangelo as the greatest artist since the beginning of renaissance. He is the best documented artist in 16th Century and has influenced so many areas of art development in the West. Together with Leonardo Da Vinci, the two stood out as strong and mighty-personalities with two  opposed attitudes to art, yet with a bond of deep understanding between them.

During his life, the western world underwent the Renaissance, which  changes in all aspects of life and culture, with dramatic reforms sweeping through the worlds of religion, politics, and scientific belief. 

Michelangelo was one of the most fervent(having or displaying a passionate intensity.) advocates of this exciting new philosophy, working with a remarkable energy that was mirrored by contemporary society. 

One of  the Italian Renaissance, his extraordinary talents emerged in early works such as the Pieta for the Vatican,  .and the statue of David commissioned for the city of Florence. 

(One of Michelangelo’s masterpieces, the most poetic and marvellous sculpture ever created.. Michelangelo arrived in Rome in 1496 when he was 21 years old .   It was while in Rome, that Michelangelo sculpted Pieta, now in St. Peters in the Vatican, in which the Virgin Mary weeps over the body of Jesus. Michelangelo went to the marble quarry and selected the marble for this exquisite piece himself. It was frequently said that Michelangelo could visualise the finished sculpture just be gazing at a block of stone.

WHEN AND WHEN MICHELANGELO’S PIETA’ WAS CREATED

Michelangelo’s Pietà is the first sculpture created in Rome by Michelangelo, who at that time was in his early 20s (1497-1499) and was rather famous.
It’s one of the great masterpieces created by Michelangelo  and is also the only work where his signature is visible, carved on the sash running across Mary’s chest.

2. WHO COMMISSIONED MICHELANGELO TO CARVE THE PIETA’

Cardinal  Jean de Bilhères, who served as French ambassador of Charles VIII to the Papal States, commissioned Michelangelo to create the Pietà, a work that had to be his funeral monument and had to be placed in the Chapel of Santa Petronilla in Saint Peter’s Basilica. However, when the sculpture was displayed to the public, everybody stared at it in fascination and admiration, so in 1517 it was decided to place it in the sacristy of St. Peter’s Basilica.

3. MICHELANGELO’S PIETA’: STYLE

The agreement between Michelangelo and his client to make the Pietà, was signed on August 27th 1498, and contains the description of the subject.
Michelangelo didn’t limit himself to create the Pietà following the classical model, which established Mary’s vertical bust and Jesus’ horizontal body, but he modernized a traditional composition and gave the work a natural appearance never seen before.

4. MICHELANGELO’S PIETA’: DESCRIPTION

Mary is represented by Michelangelo as a young woman, sat on a rock symbolizing the Calvary (or the Golgotha), the mount where Jesus was crucified.
Jesus, instead, lays down on his mother’s legs, dead.
A lot has been written about Mary’s face, too young according to some critics, but Michelangelo probably wanted to allude to Virgin Mary’s beauty, which is more spiritual than physical.

5. MICHELANGELO’S PIETA’: FORTUNES AND EVENTS

Since its creation, Michelangelo’s Pietà has been considered a masterpiece.
In 1964 Michelangelo’s Pietà was loaned to the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair and visitors waited in queue for hours to admire the sculpture!

He was now a man at the height of his creative powers, and, in 1504, back in  Florence, he completed his most famous sculpture, David. David, depicted at the moment he decides to battle Goliath, was a symbol of Florentine freedom. It is said to be a masterpiece of line and form. A committee, including Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli, was created and decided on its placement, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.

Michelangelo’s David stands nearly 17 feet tall.  Remember that the biblical figure of David was special to the citizens of Florence—he symbolized the liberty and freedom of their republican ideals, which were threatened at various points in the fifteenth century by the Medici family and others. Watch a video about the importance of the figure of David for Florence.David of Angelo

His paintings and frescoes(a painting done rapidly in water colour on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling, so that the colours penetrate the plaster and become fixed as it dries.) were largely taken from mythological and classical sources works. He manage to combine his high level of technical competence and his rich artistic imagination to produce the perfect High-Renaissance blend of aesthetic harmony and anatomical accuracy in his works.
This grand fresco contains over three hundred figures over five hundred square meters of ceiling. It took Michelangelo four years, lying on his back, to complete this masterful work, which stands even today as a testament to this one man's dedicated and accomplished artistry. The scenes depicted are from the Book of Genesis, the most famous of which is The Creation of Adam. The outstretched hands of God and Adam are an iconic image, perhaps the most widely known and imitated detail from any renaissance piece. Michelangelo, in this work, demonstrated his deep understanding of the human form, and how to depict it in a huge array of different poses.

Michelangelo became, during this time, an expert in portraying the human form, drawing from life and studying anatomy. He also obtained special permission from the Catholic Church to study human corpses to learn anatomy, though exposure to corpses had worsened his health condition

Michelangelo accepted many commissions, sculptures and paintings during his time in Florence, many of which went unfinished when, in 1505, he was called back to Rome to work on a Tomb for Pope Julius II. It was planned to be finished within 5 years but he worked on it (with frequent interruptions) for over forty years, and it seems it was never finished to his satisfaction. Fortunately, Michelangelo also completed some of his best, and most well-known work, during this time, most notably the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took him four years to finish.

Michelangelo's art has far reaching historic influence. His world is genetically a two-fold system continually expanding. Measuring his internal development from the Pieta through David to The Last Judgement, we view the path of an experience in which each stage provides the foundation for the next, from sculpture to painting, painting to architecture, architecture to the art of poetry.

In western world, he was the first - Picasso the last - to regard himself as an absolute and mythic cultural experience. He managed to combine his high level of technical competence and his rich artistic imagination to produce the perfect High Renaissance blend of aesthetic harmony and anatomical accuracy in his work.

Just like William Shakespeare on literature, and Sigmund Freud on psychology, Michelangelo's impact on art is tremendousMichelangelo not only outshines all his predecessors; he remains the only great sculptor of the Renaissance at its best. What most Late Renaissance artists lacked was not talent but the ability to use their own eyes and share a vision with either their contemporaries or posterity. Michelangelo's extreme genius left little scope for works that escaped his influence, damning all his contemporaries to settle for aping him. Appreciation of Michelangelo's artistic mastery has endured for centuries, and his name has become synonymous with the best of the Renaissance Art.