Biography:
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as
Michelangelo (Italian pronunciation:
[mikeˈlandʒelo]), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet,
and engineer of the
High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of
Western art.
[1] Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal
Renaissance man, along with his fellow Italian
Leonardo da Vinci.
Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time.
[1] A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence.
[1] His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century.
Two of his best-known works, the
Pietà and
David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in
fresco in the
history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the
ceiling and
The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the
Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the
Mannerist style at the
Laurentian Library. At the age of 74 he succeeded
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of
St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being
completed after his death with some modification.
In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by
Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries.
In his lifetime he was also often called
Il Divino ("the divine one"). One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his
terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in
Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the
High Renaissance.