Michelangelo Essay -- Biography, Michelangelo, Vatican City

As a child, Michelangelo was taken to Florence, where he was apprenticed to the painter Ghirlandaio: he seems to have found his master’s somewhat bland style uncongenial, preferring the more dustere and monumental art of Giotto and Masaccio. (Gowing447) Michelangelo ultimately chose to becoma a sculptor, and at the age of sixteen he went to study at a new school sponsored by the most powerful man, in Florence Lorenzo de Medici. (Field298) In 1496, Michelangelo was in Rome, where he was able to study far finer examples of classical art than he could have found in Florence. (Field447) The limited influence of his works includes a few cases of almost total dependence, the most talented artist who worked in this way. (Hill392) In 1505, Michelangelo was summoned to Rome to make a gigantic tomb for Pop Julius II in St. Peters, the project was to obsess him for more than three decades, as successive powerful patrons demanded his services for other commissions. (Gowing447) Pope Julius II called Michelangelo to Romie in 1505 to design his tomb, which was to include about forty life size statues. The project occupied Michelangelo off and on for the next forty years. Of it he wrote, â€Å"I find I have lost all my youth bound to this tomb.† (Hill392) Then in 1508, the pope ordered him to paint the vault of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican: the result was the most influential single work in the history of European art. (Gowing447-8) †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. Sent abt medicis fam †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. At one of Medici’s functions that Michelangelo got into a fight with another student, who punched him in the nose. For the rest of his life, Michelangelo had a flattened nose, which makes him easily recognizable in portraits. ( Field298) A reconciliation between Julius II, and Michelange... ...ll the people of Florence could see it. But there was a problem. They had to figure out how to get it there. More than 13 feet (4 meters) high and made of marble, David was obviously extremely heavy. An architect was called in to construct a special wooden frame from which David was to be hung with ropes. The ropes were tied with a special kind of slipknot, invented by Michelangelo. They got tighter and tighter the more weight there was on them. Four men took five days to move David from the church to the square. People packed the square to look at the new statue, but not everyone liked what they saw—a naked man standing out in the open and some threw stones at it. Gradually, however people began to appreciate the statue and to see that Michelangelo had given them a great and inspiring symbol. From then on his name, like his statue, soared above Florence. (EBSCO)