MICHELANGELO

Michelangelo is one of the best known architects of the Renaissance. Not only did he ingeniously restore the St. Peter but he also managed to give the old centre of Rome the Capitol a more up to date look, without loosing respect for the original architectural style.

Michelangelo di Lodovico di Buonarotti was born on 6 March 1475 in a small Tuscan town called Caprese some forty miles away of Florence. He died, in Rome, on 18 February 1564, one month short of his eighty-ninth birthday.

He was a sculptor, painter, architect and poet, the Florentines called him a

master of living stone. Unsociable, untidy, caring little for personal comforts he was a man of enormous energy. Rejecting all the assumptions of the Renaissance, he revolutionised all he touched and his style is unique in the history of art.He was the second son of Lodovico Buonarotti. Less then a month after his birth, his impoverished family returned to Florence and he went to live with a foster-mother, the wife of a stone-cutter, in the nearby village of Settignano. His mother died when he was six and some four years later he went back to live with his father, who had by this time remarried.

At school he met Francesco Granacci, who was six years older than himself and

already a painter and working in the studio of Domenico Ghirlandaio, who was a famous Renaissance artist in his days. In 1488 this early and deep friendship led to his being formally placed when Michelangelo was thirteen. It was intended that he shoud stay for three years specifically to learn the art of painting. Domenico (1449-1494) was an accomplished fresco painter with understanding of light and movement, but he had no real passion in his work.

In 1489 Michelangelo left Ghirlandaio's workshop and entered the school for

sculptors supervised by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a pupil of Donatello, to whom he had been introduced by his friend Francesco. He was situated in the garden of the Medici -the ruling family in Florence and so-called 'patrons of art'- and here he was able to study the classical sculpture. His abilities were soon recognised and he was invited in the Medici Palace, where he was well treated as one of the household.

While he still was with Bertoldo, Michelangelo made the 'Madonna of the stairs',

a small low-relief, wich described the relation between mother and child. He also made 'The battle of the Centaurs'. This shows a number of nude figures fighting each other. Michelangelo considered this the best of his early works. It isn't clear wether the figures are male or female.

On Lorenzo de Medici's death, in 1492, Michelangelo returned to his father's

house, but Lorenzo's successor, Piero invited him back again to live in the palace. Piero de Medici turned out to be an inadequate ruler and a disappointing boss. Michelangelo felt that there was something wrong with Piero and left Florence, Moving to Venice and then to Bologna. In Bologna he stayed for over a year and he carved two figures for the incomplete 'Tomb of St. Dominic.' Eventually Piero was banished from Florence and a governement was formed under the influence of Savonarola (1452-1498). Later that year, Michelangelo returned to Florence, again.

Girolamo Savonarola was a reforming monk from Ferrara and a preacher.

Michelangelo was a devout reader of his works. Savonarola was excommunicated in 1497 and burnt at the steak on 23 May 1498. Michelangelo left for Rome in the spring of 1496, and while he was living and working in the house of a rich banker called Jacopo Galli, he carved his first major work: the famous 'Bacchus'. He made it a soft, drunken man, though Bacchus himself was never drunk.

The two works that followed -the 'Rome Pieta' and the 'David'- were the real

major sculptures.The Rome Pieta was a remarkable piece of carving, but Michelangelo is probably best known for his Sixtina Chapel.