Michelangelo

Michelangelo (1475-1564), Italian painter, sculptor.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known as Michelangelo, became an apprentice to a painter in Florence at the age of twelve.

At this time, the state of Florence was ruled by Lorenzo de Medici. Michelangelo's master saw that the boy was a gifted artist. He told Lorenzo about him and Lorenzo gave him a job and let him study sculpture.

After Lorenzo's death, Michelangelo worked for a time in Rome. The Pieta, now in St. Peter's Cathedral, Rome, made him known as an outstanding young sculptor, and then, at the age of twenty-nine, he produced a masterpiece. This was a statue of David, 20 feet (six meters) high, and can be seen today in Florence. This statue made Michelangelo famous all over Italy and afterwards he worked in Rome for the Popes.

Among his later works are the statue of Moses in the church of St. Peter in Chains, Rome, and the chapel and tomb for the Medici family in the church of St. Lorenzo, Florence.

In 1508, Pope Julius II asked Michelangelo to do a series of paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. He spent four years on this job, painting the pictures lying on his back on a platform under the ceiling. When it was finished, people said he was the greatest painter in the world.

Later he spent four years painting a huge picture called Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. In 1547, he took over the job of planning St. Peter's Cathedral (which was started in 1514 by Raphael). It was not built exactly as he planned it but the famous dome of St. Peter's follows his design, and many other great domes in the world have been based on it.

See William E. Wallace Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting, Architecture