Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simon

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.

“Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet. He was one of the founders of the High Renaissance and, in his later years, one of the principal exponents of Mannerism. Born at Caprese, the son of the local magistrate, his family returned to Florence soon after his birth. Michelangelo’s desire to become an artist was initially opposed by his father, as to be a practicing artist was then considered beneath the station of a member of the gentry. He was, however, eventually apprenticed in 1488 for a three-year term to Domenico Ghirlandaio. Later in life Michelangelo tried to suppress this apprenticeship, implying that he was largely self-taught, undoubtedly because he did not want to present himself as a product of the workshop system which carried with it the stigma of painting and sculpture being taught as crafts rather than Liberal Arts. Nevertheless, it was in Ghirlandaio’s workshop that Michelangelo would have learnt the rudiments of the technique of fresco painting. Before the end of his apprenticeship, however, he transferred to the art school set up by Lorenzo the Magnificent in the gardens of the Palazzo Medici. Here he would have had access to the Medici collection of antiques, as well as a certain amount of tuition from the resident master, Bertoldo di Giovanni. His work here included two marble reliefs, a Madonna of the Steps (Casa Buonarroti, Florence), carved in rilievo schiacciato and showing the influence of Donatello (Bertoldo’s master) and a Battle of the Centaurs (Casa Buonarroti, Florence), based on Bertoldo’s bronze Battle of the Horsemen, which itself appears to be based on an antique prototype. Either at this time, or when he was in the Ghirlandaio workshop, Michelangelo also studied from and drew copies of the frescos of Giotto and Masaccio.”

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“Whether in painting, sculpture or architecture, Michelangelo’s influence has been immense. Although he restricted himself to the nude in painting, his expressive use of the idealized human form had a tremendous impact on contemporaries and future generations – even Raphael was not above directly referring to the Sistine Chapel sibyls, with his fresco of Isaiah in Sant’ Agostino. Furthermore, there was not a major Italian sculptor of the 16th century whose style was not formed under the influence of Michelangelo, or in direct reaction against him (e.g. Bandinelli). He was the first artist to be the subject of two biographies in his lifetime – those of Condivi and Vasari – with the latter doing much to promote the view of Michelangelo as the consummation of a progression towards artistic perfection that had begun with Giotto.”