Michelangelo was born on the 6th
March, 1475 in the small Tuscan village of Caprese to the
podesta, Ludovico di Leonardo di Buonarroto Simoni and to
Francesca di Neri di Miniato del Sera. The youth, left
orphan by his mother at the age of six, was introduced into
the Florentine artistic circle, a long way removed from the
paternal activity, in 1488, by his friend Francesco Granacci,
through whom he gained a period of apprenticeship in
Domenico Ghirlandaio's studio. His uncommon qualities
allowed him, immediately afterwards, to become part of the
Medici circle in the garden at St. Mark's and to frequent,
in the Medici Palace, the elite of the humanists chosen by
Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Together with his first experiences in the field of ancient
statuary, drawn up in the relief of the Battle between the
Centaurs and the Lapiths, Michelangelo cultivated his poetic
passion, encouraged by scholars and philosophers. The
arrival of Charles VIII's army in 1494 forced him to escape
from the city and take refuge in Bologna, where he completed
some statues for the altar of St. Dominic's. |
Only during his first stay in
Roma (1496 - 1501) did he succeed in getting important
commissions with the patronage of the rich banker, Jacopo
Galli, the buyer of his Bacchus (Florence, Bargello Museum)
and guarantor for the commission for the Vatican Pi eta
requested by the ambassador to the king of France.
By now famous, in Florence, his impetuous and suspicious
nature gained him his first disagreements with his more
illustrious colleagues, including Leonardo, concerning his
undertakings: the David (Florence, the Academy Galleries),
symbol of civic virtue, and the Battle of Cascina, the great
fresco project which he left unfinished in 1504. The Tondo
Doni preceded the grandiose Roman commissions that the newly
elected Julius 11 gave him from 1505 on. These were the
years of the interminable project for the papal tomb that
would torment him for 40 years and risk damaging the
relations with the pontiff after the sudden running away of
the artist to Florence. It was resolved through the
intervention of the gonfalonier, Piero Soderini. Haughty and
proud to the point of signing his youthfu I masterpiece, the
Pieta, only to hear it attributed to someone else and
disposed to confront the anger of the pontiff, impatient to
see the Sistine chapel ceiling finished.
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He was a solitary genius and
rebel, loved, but also hated by his rivals, including
Sangallo. After the important Florentine projects for the
fac;;ade of St. Lorenzo's (unfinished), with the annexed New
Sacristy, the MediciTombs and the prodigious architectonic
intuition shown in the Laurentian Library, Michelangelo
would be once again called to Roma to the interminable
Vatican building site, even to start basic urban
interventions but, above all, to finish the decoration of
the Sistine Chapel.The religious anxiety can be seen in this
work by the artist, by now elderly - already influenced by
the preaching of Savanarola - who materialises in the
sublime "unfinished" of the last Pietas. His spiritual
association with Vittoria Colonna dates back to those years
and, even before, the friendship with the noblemanTommaso
de' Cavalieri to whom he gave his designs, acquired in 1587
by the Farnese family. Many of them would be destroyed by
Michelangelo himself before dying on the 18th February,
1564, in his Roman house near Santa Maria di Loreto,
demolished for the construction of the General Assurance
Building (tablet on the wall). The body, on the wishes of
his nephew, was interred in the church of the Holy Cross at
Florence.
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