Michelangelo, in full Michelangelo di Leonardo da Vinci, (Italian: “Leonardo from
Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, (born March Vinci”) (born April 15, 1452, Anchiano, near
6, 1475, Caprese, Republic of Florence
[Italy]—died February 18, 1564, Rome,
Papal States), Italian Renaissance
sculptor, painter, architect, and poet who
exerted an unparalleled influence on the
development of Western art.
Michelangelo was considered the
greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he
has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. A
number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture
rank among the most famous in existence. Although the
frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Vatican; see
below) are probably the best known of his works today, the
artist thought of himself primarily as a sculptor. His
practice of several arts, however, was not unusual in his
time, when all of them were thought of as based on design,
or drawing. Michelangelo worked in marble sculpture all his
life and in the other arts only during certain periods. The
high regard for the Sistine ceiling is partly a reflection of
the greater attention paid to painting in the 20th century
and partly, too, because many of the artist’s works in other
media remain unfinished.
NOTABLE WORKS
“David”
“The Last Judgment”
“Bacchus”
“Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John”
“Pietà”
“Moses”
“Crucifixion of St. Peter”
Vinci, Republic of Florence [Italy]—died May
2, 1519, Cloux [now Clos-Lucé], France),
Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor,
architect, and engineer whose genius,
perhaps more than that of any other figure,
epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last
Supper (1495–98) and Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19) are among the
most widely popular and influential paintings of the
Renaissance. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific
inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries
ahead of their time.The unique fame that Leonardo enjoyed
in his lifetime and that, filtered by historical criticism, has
remained undimmed to the present day rests largely on his
unlimited desire for knowledge, which guided all his thinking
and behaviour. An artist by disposition and endowment, he
considered his eyes to be his main avenue to knowledge; to
Leonardo, sight was man’s highest sense because it alone
conveyed the facts of experience immediately, correctly,
and with certainty. Hence, every phenomenon perceived
became an object of knowledge, and saper vedere (“knowing
how to see”) became the great theme of his studies. He
applied his creativity to every realm in which graphic
representation is used: he was a painter, sculptor, architect,
and engineer.
NOTABLE WORKS
“Mona Lisa” “Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci” “Leda”
“Last Supper” “The Virgin of the Rocks” “St. Jerome”
“Treatise on Painting” “Battle of Anghiari” “The Benois
Madonna” “Virgin and Child with St. Anne”
 Raphael, Italian in full Raffaello
Sanzio or Raffaello Santi, (born April 6,
1483, Urbino, Duchy of Urbino [Italy]—
died April 6, 1520, Rome, Papal
States[Italy]), master painter and
architect of the Italian High
Renaissance. Raphael is best known for
his Madonnas and for his large
figure compositions in the Vatican. His
work is admired for its clarity of form
and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of
the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.
NOTABLE WORKS
Stanza della Segnatura
“The Marriage of the Virgin” Stanza d’Elidoro
“Disputa” “The Liberation of St. Peter”
“School of Athens” “Transfiguration”
Donatello, original name in full Donato di
Niccolò di Betto Bardi, (born c.1386,
Florence [Italy]—died December 13, 1466,
Florence), master of sculpture in
both marble and bronze, one of the greatest
of all Italian Renaissance artists.
A good deal is known about Donatello’s life
and career, but little is known about his
character and personality, and what is known is not wholly
reliable. He never married and he seems to have been a man
of simple tastes. Patrons often found him hard to deal with
in a day when artists’ working conditions were regulated
by guild rules. Donatello seemingly demanded a measure of
artistic freedom. Although he knew a number
of humanists well, the artist was not a cultured intellectual.
His humanist friends attest that he was a connoisseur of
ancient art. The inscriptions and signatures on his works are
among the earliest examples of the revival of
Classical Roman lettering. He had a more detailed and wide-
ranging knowledge of ancient sculpture than any other artist
of his day. His work was inspired by ancient visual examples,
which he often daringly transformed. Though he was
traditionally viewed as essentially a realist, later research
indicates he was much more.
Main works
"St. Mark" (1411–1413), Orsanmichele, Florence
St. George Tabernacle (c. 1415–1417) — Museo Nazionale del
Bargello, Florence
"Prophet Habacuc" (1423–1425) — Museo dell'Opera del
Duomo, Florence
"The Feast of Herod" (c. 1425) — Baptismal font, Duomo di
Siena
"David" (c. 1425–1430) — Museo Nazionale del Bargello,
Florence
"Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata" (1445–1450) —
Piazza del Santo, Padua
"Magdalene Penitent" (c. 1455) — Museo dell'Opera del
Duomo, Florence
"Judith and Holofernes" (1455–1460) — Palazzo Vecchio,
Florence
"Virgin and Child with Four Angels" or "Chellini Madonna"
(1456), Victoria and Albert Museum