O now I know how foolish and how stark
My art has been, so far from its true source,
And how I made an idol and a monarch
Of something that, alas, gives but remorse.
Painting no more, nor sculpture, can now quiet
My soul, turned to that Love divine that, here.
To take us, opened its arms on a cross and bled.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6, 1475 in the village of Caprese, Italy. He was the second of five sons born to Ludovico di Leonardo di Buonarotto Simoni and Francesca Neri. The day he arrived, his father wrote the following words: "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."
His father was the resident magistrate in Caprese and podestà of Chiusi. His mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarroti claimed to descend from Countess Mathilde of Canossa.
MICHELANGELO'S CHILDHOOD & YOUTH
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 stone cutters, where in his own words he, "sucked in the craft of hammer and chisel with my foster mother's milk. When I told my father that I wish to be an artist, he flew into a rage, 'artists are laborers, no better than shoemakers."
EARLY YEARS IN FLORENCE
Michelangelo was raised in Florence where his father, now a minor Florentine official with connections to the ruling Medici family, was a man obsessed with preserving what little remained of the Buonarroti fortunes. With few properties and monies remaining Ludovico hoped that with his studies, Michelangelo could become a successful merchant or businessman, thereby preserving the Buonarroti position in society. Michelangelo drew extensively as a child, and his father placed him under the tutelage of Ghirlandaio, a respected artist of the day at the age of 12, but he soon began to study sculpture instead.
He attracted the attention and patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, who was ruler of Florence until 1492. He lived with a sculptor and his wife in the town of Settignano where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. Michelangelo's childhood has been said to had been grim and lacking in affection, and he was touchy and quick to respond with fierce words, tending to keep to himself, out of shyness according to some but also, according to others, a lack of trust in his fellows. His father recognized his son'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'S ART
The From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo lived with the Medicis; during this time he learned from such philosophers as Ficino, Landino, Poliziano, and Savonarola. Although Michelangelo claimed that he was self-taught, one might perceive in his work the influence of such artists as Leonardo, Giotto, and Poliziano. Pietà. After the death of Lorenzo in 1492, Piero de' Medici (Lorenzo's oldest son and new head of the Medici family), refused to support Michelangelo's artwork. Also at that time, the ideas of Savonarola became popular in Florence. Under those two pressures, Michelangelo decided to leave Florence and stay in Bologna for three years. Influenced by Roman antiquity, he produced the statue
Four years later, Michelangelo returned to Florence where he produced arguably his most famous work, the marble David. He also painted the Holy Family of the Tribune.
Michelangelo was summoned back to Rome in 1503 by the newly appointed Pope Julius II where he was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. However, under the patronage of Julius II, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks. The most famous of those were the monumental paintings on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel which took four years (1508 - 1512) to complete. Due to those and later interruptions, Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years without ever finishing it.
In 1513 Pope Julius II died and his successor Pope Leo X, a Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the exterior of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly. The three years he spent in creating drawings and models for the facade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project, were among the most frustrating in his career, as work was abruptly cancelled by his financially-strapped patrons before any real progress had been made.
Medici later came back to Michelangelo with another proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel at the church of San Lorenzo. Fortunately for posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realized. Though still incomplete, it is the best example we have of the integration of the artist's scuptural and architectural vision, since Michelangleo created both the major sculptures as well as the interior plan. Ironically the most prominent tombs are those of two rather obscure Medici who died young, a son and grandson of Lorenzo. Il Magnifico himself is buried in an obscure corner of the chapel, not given a free-standing monument, as originally intended.
MICHELANGELO'S FINAL DAYS
Michelangelo Buonarroti died, giving himself up to God, on February 18th, 1564, after a "slow fever." As Vasari tells us, he made his will in three sentences, in front of his physician and his friends Tommaso Cavalieri and Daniele da Volterra, saying that he left "his soul to God, his body to the earth, and his material possessions to his nearest relations." In reality, there was little left in his house, since some time earlier he had burned much of his artistic material, including, to the great displeasure of Cosimo I, the designs for the facade of San Lorenzo.
His body was deposited in a sarcophagus in the church of Santi Apostoli, but a few days after the burial his nephew Lionardo Buonarroti, who had arrived in Rome, took possession of his uncle's property and carried off the corpse, concealed in a bale. When they reached Florence, the mortal remains of the "divine artist" were taken to Santa Croce (where Michelangelo himself had wanted to be buried). The inhabitants of Florence turned out in large numbers, venerating the body of their illustrious fellow citizen, "father and master of all the arts," as if it were a sacred relic.
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