Michelangelo

Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. Active in his native Florence and in Rome, his giant talent dominated the High Renaissance. The marble David (1501–04; Accademia, Florence) set a new standard in nude sculpture. His massive figure style was translated into fresco on the ceiling (1508–12) and altar wall (1536–41) of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Michelangelo's influence, particularly on the development of Mannerism, was profound. His architectural works, including the dome of St Peter's basilica, also greatly influenced the emergence of the baroque style.

Michelangelo was born in Caprese, but raised in Florence. Early influences included the successful artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, to whom he was apprenticed at the age of 13, the paintings of Giotto, and the frescoes of Masaccio. Early work in the Medici's school and collection of classic sculpture, inspired Michelangelo's great passion for the sculptural form, and encouraged his empathy with the human figure as a conveyor of highly-charged emotion. In the colossal David, as in other subsequent figurative work, the human form serves not as a representation, but as an encapsulation of feeling, both physical and emotional. The same energy is unleashed in the tremendous biblical symphony he created for the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, where the Creation of the World and of Man, the Fall, and the Flood are interpreted in nine great compositions, flanked by the figures of prophets and sibyls, and with supporting ‘slaves’ or ‘atlases’. His vision is conveyed with the utmost force and lucidity by the human figure and gesture alone, as in the magnificent Creation of Adam. For his work on the altar wall, Michelangelo took the Last Judgement as his subject. In a different key from his earlier work, it is sombrely majestic and tells of torture and martyrdom, stern retribution, and tragic fate. This tragic masterpiece lacks the beauty of the ceiling work, yet in its command of movement in space, it indicated the course that Italian art was to follow for a century to come.