Michelangelo Essay -- essays research papers

In the time of the Renaissance there were many artists but one really stood out to me, he was Michelangelo. He stood out the most to me because he had some of the most beautiful work I have ever seen. He painted some of the most beautiful building that is still around today. One of the most that I enjoyed looking at was the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. It took him a lot of time to paint the entire building. I feel this was his best piece of art ever. He had many accomplishments that were outstanding. The second of five brothers, Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475, at Caprese, in Tuscany, to Ludovico di Leonardo di Buonarotto Simoni and Francesca Neri. The same day, his father noted down: "Today March 6, 1475, a child of the male sex has been born to me and I have named him Michelangelo. He was born on Monday between 4 and 5 in the morning, at Caprese, where I am the Podestà  ." Although born in the small village of Caprese, Michelangelo always considered himself a "son of Florence," as did his father, "a Citizen of Florence." Buonarroti's mother, Francesca Neri, was too sick and frail to nurse Michelangelo, so he was placed with a wet nurse, in a family of stonecutters, where he, "sucked in the craft of hammer and chisel with my foster mother. When he told my father that he wished to be an artist, he flew into a rage, 'artists are laborers, no better than shoemakers." Buonarroti's mother died young, when the child was only six years ol d. But even before then, Michelangelo's childhood had been lacking affection, and he was always to retain a good position in his father’s heart. Touchy and quick to respond with fierce words, he tended to keep to himself, out of shyness according to some but also, according to others, a lack of trust in his fellows. His father soon recognized the boy's intelligence and "anxious for him to learn his letters, sent him to the school of a master, Francesco Galeota from Urbino, who in that time taught grammar." While he studied the principles of Latin, Michelangelo made friends with a student, Francesco Granacci six years older than him, who was learning the art of painting in Ghirlandaio's studio and who encouraged Michelangelo to follow his own artistic vocation. Michelangelo studied the human anatomy in order to make his painting more life like. In doing things the pictures l... ...onna and Christ, may have been begun by Michelangelo before 1550 but had remained unfinished. Now his friends - we are told by Vasari - had asked him to start work on it again "so that he could continue using his chisel everyday." Still perfectly lucid, the almost ninety-year-old Michelangelo created one of his most spiritual images, in which the Mother and Christ almost interpenetrate in an indissoluble union, beyond passion and physical death. While residing in Florence for this extended period, Michelangelo also undertook-between 1519 and 1534-the commission of the Medici Tombs 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; the other for Giulinao De’ Medici duke of Nemours. The tombs of the Medici were of a completely new form. Michelangelo abandoned the use of architecture and arabesques that decorated all Florentine tombs, and that he himself had widely used in his designs for the tomb of Pope Julius II. Here, he wanted no accessory forms, and only the statues were to express the thoughts of his soul.