Michelangelo Bounarroti his life and work

Essay by 12milehighUniversity, Bachelor's May 2004

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Michelangelo Bounarroti is considered one of the most talented creators in the history of art. As a sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, he exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on the subsequent art world. His works are well know and easily recognizable. His life and works are still an inspiration to artist everywhere.

Michelangelo was born March 6, 1475, in the small village of Caprese, in Florence. His father, Ludovico Buonarroti, was a Florentine official with connections to the ruling Medici family. At age 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to painter Domenico Ghirlandio for two years. Shortly thereafter, while studying at the sculpture school in the Medici gardens and was invited into the household of Lorenzo de' Medici the Magnificent, leader of Florence at the time.

While residing with the Medicis, Michelangelo had an opportunity to interact with the younger Medicis, two of whom later became popes (Leo X and Clement VII).

These popes later commissioned him to do work. He produced at least two relief sculptures by the time he was 16 years old, (the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of the Stairs), showing tremendous personal style early on. When Lorenzo died in 1492, the Medici family was expelled from Florence. Michelangelo fled Florence, and went to Bologna, there he continued to sculpt at the commission of local churches.

Four years later, in 1496, Michelangelo moved to Rome, where he was able to study many newly unearthed classical statues and ruins. He soon produced his first large scale sculpture; bigger than life Bacchus, it is one of the few secular works made by the artist, and depicts the Roman god of wine with a satyr. Shortly after the Bacchus, in 1500, at age 25, Michelangelo completed his of three Pietas. The Pieta` is one of...