Michelangelo — Sculptor, Painter, and Architect of the High Renaissance
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. From the Pietà and the David to the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the design of St. Peter's Basilica, his work set the terms of Western art for centuries, and he became the first Western artist whose biography was published in his own lifetime.
Events
Born in Caprese
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, near Arezzo, where his father served as local administrator for the Florentine Republic. His mother died in 1481, and the boy was placed with a stonecutter's family in Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry; he later told Giorgio Vasari that "with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer."
Location: Caprese, Republic of Florence
Enters Ghirlandaio's Workshop and the Medici Garden
In 1488 Michelangelo was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the leading painters in Florence, and within two years he moved into the sculpture garden of Lorenzo de' Medici, where he studied classical sculpture under Bertoldo di Giovanni. The Medici household exposed him to the humanist circle of Florence and to the antiquities that shaped his sculptural language.
Location: Florence, Republic of Florence
Carves the Pietà for St. Peter's
Cardinal Jean de Bilhères commissioned the Pietà for his funeral chapel in St. Peter's, and Michelangelo carved it from a single block of Carrara marble between 1497 and 1499, when he was in his early twenties. The work established his reputation in Rome, and it remains the only sculpture he signed.
Location: Rome, Papal States
Completes the David
Between 1501 and 1504 Michelangelo carved the David, standing 5.17 metres (17 feet) tall, from a marble block that two earlier sculptors had abandoned as unworkable. Installed before the Palazzo della Signoria in September 1504, the statue was adopted as a civic symbol of the Florentine Republic and defined the heroic figure type of High Renaissance sculpture.
Location: Florence, Republic of Florence
Paints the Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Pope Julius II commissioned the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1508, and Michelangelo painted roughly 500 square metres of fresco above the chapel's walls, completing the work in October 1512. The program, which grew from a simple scheme of apostles to more than three hundred figures from Genesis, was executed while he worked overhead on scaffolding of his own design; his sonnets describe the physical strain of the job.
Location: Rome, Papal States
Fortifies Florence During the Siege
After the Medici were expelled from Florence and the Sack of Rome in 1527 threw papal politics into turmoil, Michelangelo served the restored Florentine Republic, directing its fortification works as imperial troops besieged the city in 1529 and 1530. When Florence surrendered in August 1530 he went into hiding and was pardoned by Pope Clement VII, returning to papal commissions that brought him back to Rome for good.
Location: Florence, Republic of Florence
Paints The Last Judgment
Commissioned by Pope Paul III in 1536, The Last Judgment covered the entire altar wall of the Sistine Chapel and was unveiled on 31 October 1541. The fresco drew criticism for its extensive nudity: defenders argued the figures served the theological drama of the scene, while critics pressed for their covering, and after the Council of Trent the painter Daniele da Volterra was engaged from 1565 to add draperies over parts of the work.
Location: Rome, Papal States
Becomes Chief Architect of St. Peter's Basilica
At the age of seventy-one Michelangelo succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as architect of St. Peter's Basilica, reshaping the building's plan toward a unified central design and developing the dome that defines the Roman skyline. He reportedly refused payment for the work, and the dome was completed after his death with modifications by Giacomo della Porta.
Location: Rome, Papal States
Vasari Publishes the First Biography of a Living Artist
Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects appeared in 1550 with Michelangelo as its only living subject, presenting his work as the culmination of the revival of the arts and calling him "divino." Ascanio Condivi's Life of Michelangelo, published in 1553 with the artist's own participation, corrected Vasari in places and remains a primary source for the biography.
Location: Florence, Duchy of Florence
Dies in Rome
Michelangelo died in Rome on 18 February 1564, three weeks before his eighty-ninth birthday. His body was carried to Florence and buried in Santa Croce, and his late drawings and unfinished sculptures, made into his final years, shaped Mannerism and the generations of artists who imitated his expressive physical style.
Location: Rome, Papal States