Michelangelo was a true "Renaissance Man", painter, poet, engineer and architect. But what he loved most throughout his life was sculpture. In this article we'll take a brief look at his life and some of his work.

Michelangelo was born Michelangelo di Ludovico di Buonarroti Simoni, on March 6, 1475, in the town of Caprese in Tuscany to Ludovico di Leonardo di Buonarroti Simoni and Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Sienna, the second of five sons. His mother was weak, sickly and unable to feed him so he was sent to a wet nurse in a family of stone cutters. Michelangelo was later to tell Giorgio Vasari, an historian and author of Lives of the Artists, that he had absorbed the ability to carve stone with his nurse's milk.

As a young boy Michelangelo was raised in Florence where his father sent him to study, in hopes that he would join his business and reverse the family fortunes. But the boy would have none of it and preferred to associate with painters and sculptors. At the age of 13 young Michelangelo was apprenticed to the painter
Domenico Ghirlandaio, a famous artist still known to this day. At 14 Michelangelo's father was able to convince Ghirlandaio to pay the boy for the work he did for the artist! This was unheard of at the time.

Ghirlandaio recommended his apprentice to Lorenzo de Medici, also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, a driving force of the Italian Renaissance. From 1490 to 1492, at age 15 to 17 Michelangelo attended Lorenzo's school and absorbed much from some of the greatest minds of the day. It was during this time that Michelangelo firdt made his mark on the world of sculpture. He created two works of sculpture that are still loved, the Madonna of the Steps and Battle of the Centaurs.

In November, 1497, at the age of 22 the Pieta, one of his best loved works, was commissioned, by a French Ambassador to the Vatican, and it was completed a mere two years later. During these years Michelangelo lived and worked in Rome due to the political upheavals in Florence.

In 1499 Michelangelo returned to Florence and in 1504 he finished his most famous sculpture, David, as a symbol of freedom. It was originally meant to stand outside the Palazzo Vecchio but spent many years standing in a plaza outside the Uffizi Gallery. The original now stands inside the Academia in Florence and a copy stands outside in the plaza.

Michelangelo began work the following year on the tomb of Pope Julius II, a project he would work on for 40 years, due to the many interruptions of other projects. The tomb was never finished as Michelangelo intended but contains a very well known sculpture, the figure of Moses. The tomb is located in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains) in rome. The Bound Slave figures were originally intended for this tomb. These appear to some as unfinished, but they are very moving as they are, finished or not.

During the 1520's and 1530's Michelangelo worked on sculptures for, and the design of, the Medici Chapel, which was also a Medici family tomb.

Michelangelo died February 18, 1564, in Rome while working on the dome of St Peter's Basilica, but his remains are interred at the Basilica of Santa Croce in his beloved Tuscany.

In later articles we will look at some of Michelangelo's paintings and architecture. To view some of the works mentioned in this article, or for more detailed information, look at this website: http://www.michelangelo.com/buonarroti.html