"Michelangelo Buonarroti" (1475–1564). Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance and, in his later years, one of the forces that shaped Mannerism. He was born on 6 March 1475 at Caprese, near Sansepolcro, where his father was podestà . Michelangelo's father was a member of the minor Florentine nobility and throughout his life Michelangelo was touchy on the subject; it may have been pride of birth that caused the opposition to his apprenticeship as a painter and Michelangelo's own insistence in later life on the status of painting and sculpture among the liberal arts. Certainly his own career was one of the prime causes of the far-reaching change in public esteem and social rating of the visual arts.
He was formally apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio for a term of three years on 1 April 1488 and from him he must have learnt the elements of fresco technique, since the Ghirlandaio workshop was then engaged on the great fresco cycle in the choir of S. Maria Novella, Florence. He could not have learnt very much else, however, since he seems to have transferred very quickly to the school set up in the Medici gardens and run by Bertoldo di Giovanni. More important than either master was what he learned from the drawings he made of figures in the frescoes of his true masters, Giotto and Masaccio.
His work in the Medici gardens soon brought him to the notice of Lorenzo the Magnificent himself and one of Michelangelo's earliest works, the Centaurs relief (Florence, Bargello) may have been made for Lorenzo and left unfinished because of his death on 8 April 1492. After the death of Lorenzo the political situation in Florence deteriorated, first with Savanarola's oppressive theocracy and then with his judicial murder (1498).
In October 1494 Michelangelo left Florence for Bologna, where he carved two small figures and an angel for the tomb of S. Dominic. On 25 June 1496 he was in Rome, where he remained for the next five years and where he carved the two statues which established his fame—the Bacchus (Florence, Bargello) and the Pietà (Rome, S. Peter's). The latter, his only signed work, was commissioned in 1497 (the contract is dated 27 August 1498) and completed about the turn of the century. It is completely finished and highly polished and is in fact the consummation of all that the Florentine sculptors of the 15th century had sought to achieve—a tragically expressive and yet beautiful and harmonious solution to the problem of representing a full-grown man lying dead on the lap of a woman.
There are no marks of suffering—as were common in northern representations of the period—and the Virgin herself is young and beautiful. There is a story that objection was taken to the fact that the Virgin seemed too young to be the mother of the dead Christ, and Michelangelo countered this by observing that sin was what caused people to age and therefore the Immaculate Virgin would not show her age as ordinary people would.
The story is told by Michelangelo's pupil and biographer Condivi and is therefore presumably true in essentials. No other living artist except Leonardo da Vinci would have thought out the implications of his subject and linked the desire to achieve the utmost physical beauty and the maximum technical virtuosity with so considered an interpretation of the Christian mystery.
Still in his twenties, Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1501 to consolidate the reputation he had made in Rome. He remained there until the spring of 1505, the major work of the period being the David (1501–4; Florence, Accademia), which has become a symbol of Florence and Florentine art. The nude youth of gigantic size (approx. 6 m/18 ft high) expresses in concrete visual form the self-confidence of the new Republic. It is really a relief although actually carved in the round. It displays complete mastery of human anatomy, and it is taut with imminent action and latent energy.
