(Apfa14)+Michelangelo

Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, a town in Tuscany. His parents were Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, the mayor of Caprese, and Francesca di Neri, who died when Michelangelo was six. The Buonarroti family was descended from Florentine nobility, but its financial and social positions had been seriously compromised by the time Michelangelo was born. A month after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where Michelangelo was entrusted to a nurse. In 1485 Lodovico Buonarroti remarried, and Michelangelo returned to Florence to live with his family, briefly attending a local school. Although his father did not approve, Michelangelo became an apprentice in the studio of Domenico Ghirlandaio, where he made sketches of Early Renaissance works and probably learned fresco painting. In early 1489, he left the Ghirlandaio's studio to enroll in Bertoldo di Giovanni's school of sculpture, where he worked on clay and marble copies of Classical works.

In 1490, the fifteen-year-old Michelangelo's talent was so advanced that Lorenzo de' Medici, an important Florentine patron of the arts, invited the young artist to live in his palace. Michelangelo stayed in the Medici home until Lorenzo died in April 1492. In Lorenzo's palace, Michelangelo was able to continue his academic education on an informal basis. Later in 1492, Michelangelo was invited back to the Medici palace by Piero de' Medici, where he worked until the French invasion in 1494, when he fled to Venice and Bologna. Florence briefly became a republic, and Michelangelo returned in 1495 to work at the Medici palace.

Much later, in the year 1516, Michelangelo returned once more to Florence (the city once again under Medici power) at the request of the new Pope, Leo X. Once there, he began to work on a facade for the San Lorenzo cathedral. Michelangelo worked both on this project and on the Julius tomb in Rome until 1520. From 1520 to 1524, during the beginning of the Reformation, he worked on a project for the Medicis, but the family fled the city in 1529, when the papal seat of Rome was sacked by mercenaries of the Holy Roman Empire. Michelangelo spent 1529 in the employ of the Florentine Republic, working on designing fortifications to defend the city from invasion.

As the conflict between the Pope Clement VII and the Florentine republic worsened, Michelangelo fled back to Venice, but returned to Florence when the republic accused him of treason. In 1530, Florence was occupied by imperial troops who put the city under the control of Clement VII. The Pope offered a frightened Michelangelo immunity IF he worked on the Medici Chapel, which he did until 1532. At this time, Michelangelo travelled to Rome for work on comissioned tombs.

After Pope Paul III succeeded Clement VII in 1534, he ordered Michelangelo to halt construction of the tomb of Julius to begin the famous "Last Judgement" altarpiece for the Sistine Chapel in Rome. After the completion of the work in 1541, Michelangelo began work on his frescoes for Paul III, and finally finished the tomb of Julius, though he was disappointed with the result. Michelangelo remained in Rome for the rest of his life, until his death in February 1564 due to sudden illness.

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, home to some of the most iconic pieces of artwork in the world.