Michelangelo

Michelangelo was an Italian sculptor, painter and architect. He excelled in all three fields and his life's work bore a legacy so grand that it transcends into today's world and it has made him one of the most influential artists in the history of mankind, along with the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci.

One of his best works in sculpture is perhaps the 17-foot tall David. Later on, he extended his works with Moses and the Slaves and the Pieta. The most remarkable feature about these structures is perhaps the fact that these marble statues seemed magnificently real, so much so that it is difficult to tell these works were done by hammer and chisel.

Michelangelo began his career as an artist when he was twelve years old, with a lack of support from his family, as artists in that era were associated with low income. Soon he became an apprentice to Ghirlandaio, although in later life, he denied this fact and claimed to be completley self-taught.

After working with Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo worked for Lorenzo de Medici as a sculptor and was invited to join the powerful household. Following the death of Lorenzo in 1492, Michelangelo resumed to work under the former's heir, Piero, who lost his reign after two years. In order to avoid the political upheaval, Michelangelo left Florence and went on to work in Rome. He returned to Florence in 1501 and in the next four years achieved greats height of success in his work. Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508 to paint the ceiling of Vatican's Sistine Chapel and achieved some greats successes in the next four years.

Michelangelo's painting offers a unique link between sculpture and art. Being a sculptor enabled him to paint realistic figures and by mostly using male models he painted bodies that were vast and larger than life, as well as muscular but still containing a powerful presence and elegance. His paintings represented how he thought and how his mind worked and he seemed to have depicted a yearning for painting the human body in various forms and positions in order to create different expressions and meanings within his works.

Michelangelo was not one for sharing and displaying his works for public display. He intended to have most of his works hidden from the public eye. He created the publicly available statues and paintings mostly for his patrons that commissioned them, but he intended to keep most of his other works out of reach, which is why he destroyed a large part of his life's work before his death. He may have also have intended to hide how much preparation he used to put into his painting.