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Artist Analysis: Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on 6th March 1475 in a town

known as Caprese in Italy. His father was a Florentine government agent, but his family moved

to Florence shortly after being born. He subsequently considered Florence his true home.

Michelangelo was an expert in painting and sculpturing, an engineer, poet and the best architect.

Many artists who were his apprentices helped him paint the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, but

none had mastery. At 13, Michelangelo was Domenico Ghirlandaio's apprentice, and one year

later, his skill and creativity caught Lorenzo de Medici's attention, who invited him to reside in

his grandiose house (Barkan 117). When he was about 17 years of age, he began dissecting

corpses at a community graveyard to acquire a deeper comprehension of the human body. These

actions were against church rules and therefore illegal, but understanding human body shape and

dimensions were crucial to his success. His sculptures portrayed all the muscles, veins, wrinkles,

nerves, and bones. Michelangelo's realistic paintings influenced many artists during the

renaissance period.

When the Medici family was expelled from Florence in 1494, Michelangelo moved to

Rome, where he was given several assignments. One of his crucial first works was the Pieta

which he created in 1498, a sculpture that portrayed the body of Jesus on the Virgin Mary's lap.
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This sculpture depicted Michelangelo's skill because he sculptured two perfect bodies on a single

marble block. After Pieta's success, Michelangelo was tasked with sculpting a monumental

figure of Biblical David which was to be put in Florence Cathedral. This sculpture depicted the

artist's knowledge and appreciation of the human body's shape, and it established Michelangelo's

popularity. The following year, he painted a panorama that was to be put beside Leonardo Da

Vinci's painting in Florence City Hall. Another famous painting is the 'Creation of Adam', which

depicts God's creation of human beings. It portrays Adam in a repose position reaching towards

God, almost touching their fingertips. The feminine figure beside God is assumed to be either

Mary or Eve. Michelangelo was a catholic, and all his work was purely scientific and depiction

of the human body.

Michelangelo's art was recreated by other artists, which led to the development of a

movement known as Mannerisms. However, Mannerists overdid the proportions of the human

body, and they became prevalent from 1520 to 1580 until Baroque disrupted their fame. In

ancient times, before Michelangelo was born, artists painted un-proportional, uni-dimensional

human body shapes. His ability to sculpt and paint the human body with significant accuracy and

sophistication was unmatched, but his approach has been applied to art by artists in the 21st

century. He did not like painting and deterred from referring to himself as a painter. However, he

painted the Sistine Chapel's whole ceiling in 1508 (de Campos et al., 913). During four years, he

had painted over 400 paintings while lying on his back on scaffolding. He ensured that all the

details from the biblical scenes were included in his art's sophisticated images. Old Greek and

Roman art mainly influenced his paintings.

After Pope died in 1513, Michelangelo was commissioned by the Pope to work on

Basilica San Lorenzo, the biggest church in Florence. He worked on it for three years but later
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stopped due to insufficient funds. Subsequent work was in the Medici chapel in Basilica of San

Lorenzo, which took him 20 years of intermittent working. During these twenty years, he

completed an architectural commission for a library. In 1527, Florence was under siege for three

years. This state made Michelangelo fear for his life and flee back to Rome. When he was 57, he

found friends who ignited his poetic version of him. First, in 1532 Michelangelo met Tommaso

Dei Cavalieri, who had artistic gifts. He describes this friend as the "light of our century, paragon

of all the world" (Lavin 10). Their relationship provoked Michelangelo to write love poems.

In 1536, Michelangelo found another love in the widow Vittoria Colonna, a poet who

was also the baroness of Pescara. Many of his poems majored on her until she died in 1547. He

also made images of her through beautiful paintings, one of which survived was Pietta for

Vittoria Colonna. She is the only woman who had meaning in Michelangelo's life, and their

relationship is assumed to have been purely platonic. During this time, he also attended several

architectural assignments based on Santa Maria's church and the Sforza chapel in Basilica. In

1540, Michelangelo encountered Ceccno Dei Bracci, a twelve-year-old son of a wealthy

Florentine banker. Four years later, after this friend's death, he wrote emotionally, revealing the

extent of their relationship, which was more than friendship.

"The sculptor's hand can only break the spell to free the figures slumbering in the stone,"

said Michelangelo (Rodriguez 20). Michelangelo changed people's perception of the human

body's representation through art through his quotes and wise sayings. He portrayed that it is not

a sin to paint or sculpt the human body as most of his work was done by Michelangelo, showing

nude images of his subjects, for example, David and Creation. He was a discoverer in Italian

reconnaissance art that gave people a deep understanding of the human body. His work depicted

classism as a style that resembled classical antiquities. From 1520-1527, he worked on the
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Medici chapel's interior in Florence, and he worked on the windows and corners that were

peculiar in their appearance and carved them into enhanced classical forms.

Michelangelo's works continued throughout his life, mainly in the Basilica. One of his

significant contributions is the dome, located in eastern Basilica. He gathered all the previous

architects' ideas who had significant input on this work and merged them with his ideas. Even

though the dome was not finished even after his death, only the dome's base had been completed,

which meant that the architects could never change its structure after its completion. Basilica

remains the biggest church globally, and its grandeur attributed to Michelangelo's dedication and

hard work that they saw it through. He completed several Pietas, including the Rondanini Pieta,

which he worked on until few weeks after his death (Vranic 20). Philosophers write that it takes

a person 10000 hours of practice to be perfect in anything. Michelangelo proves this saying as he

practised art from when he was a boy until 88. His love, Tommaso, stayed by his side until the

end, when he succumbed to a short ailment in 1564. His body was taken to Florence and

entombed at Basilica de Santa Croce according to his wishes.

. Michelangelo, along with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, were the renaissance

pioneers, a significant contributor to humanitarian organizations. His work has altered my

perception of art psychologically due to the emotional intensity of his career. He was an expert in

portraying the body with such sophistication and effectiveness that the sculptures were almost

like real people. He has bestowed a divine title, for no one could match his expertise in

sculpturing and painting. His art influenced many other artists starting from Raphael during his

time to Ruebens, Bernini and Rodin. His fame established during his twenties and will be passed

down through history into generations to come.

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Work cited

Rodriguez, Hillary. "Transformations in Europe 15th-18th Centuries." (2013).

Lavin, Irving. "David's Sling and Michelangelo's Bow: A sign of freedom." (2019).

Vranic, Ivana. Visibility of sculpted matter and form: Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà and the

ontological nature of sculpture. Diss. University of British Columbia, 2010.

de Campos, Deivis, et al. "The hidden symbols of the female anatomy in Michelangelo

Buonarroti's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel." Clinical Anatomy 29.7 (2016): 911-916.

Barkan, Leonard. Michelangelo: A life on paper. Princeton University Press, 2011.