Michelangelo: Exploring the Master's Art and Life

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on March 6, 1475 in the small Italian town of Caprese (now Caprese Michelangelo), where his father had taken a temporary government post following the failure of the family's banking business in Florence.

Several months after his birth, the artist's family returned to Florence, where the young Michelangelo was raised by a nanny and her husband, a stonecutter. During these years, the artist and his caretakers lived on his father’s small farm with a marble quarry. It is unsurprising that Michelangelo’s passion for working with marble was quickly cultivated.

Michelangelo’s life and work was heavily influenced by contemporary developments in social and intellectual thought, particularly humanism. Florence in the late fifteenth century was the center of Italian art and learning.

A renewed interest in Classical thought during the period ushered in a wave of appreciation for the extraordinary potential of the human mind, a central tenent of humanist philosophy. Reflecting his interest in humanism, much of Michelangelo's works emphasize the beauty of the human form. Armed with an extensive knowledge of human anatomy, Michelangelo’s brilliance is especially apparent in the detail of his figures' musculature. Famous works like his David and The Creation of Adam showcase this skill.

Michelangelo was especially interested in nude male subjects, which has sparked historical inquiry into the artist’s sexuality. He wrote several hundred surviving sonnets and other poems, the longest of which was dedicated to Tommaso dei Cavalieri and suggests that the men had more than a platonic relationship.

Unlike some of the Renaissance masters, Michelangelo was a devout Catholic. Many of his most distinguished works such as the Tomb of Julius II, the fresco paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the design of the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica were commissioned by the various Popes who led the Church during his lifetime.

Michelangelo’s prodigious ability across so many artistic mediums has convinced many scholars that he is not just the greatest artist of his era, but the greatest of all time.