Michelangelo: A Renaissance Master – Sculptor, Painter, Architect
Architect, painter, and above all, a sculptor, Michelangelo is the greatest exponent of the long list of individual talents that the Italian Renaissance lit. Comparable in its beginnings to the current of the Cinquecento, his magnificent work is significant, almost from the beginning, a powerful manifestation of the feelings that result in monumental and powerful figures in Mannerist style (not without reason, the term “terribilitá” was coined to describe it).
Michelangelo was born in 1475 into a noble family: the Buonarroti. Since childhood, his artistic vocation was evident, and his father finally decided to send him to the workshop of painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. But his true education would be in the school created by the Medici in the Garden of San Marcos, where Michelangelo truly revealed himself as the great sculptor he would become.
It was in this environment that he first came into contact with the knowledge of works inherited from classical antiquity, a decisive factor in his later work. He soon stood out among his peers, drawing the attention of Lorenzo de’ Medici, who from that time until his death would become a patron and admirer of Michelangelo’s genius. During this initial stage, he received various commissions.
It was the death of his protector that marked the beginning of Michelangelo’s career in earnest. He traveled and received several important commissions. After a stay in Bologna, he returned to Florence for a short time before embarking on his first trip to Rome. In this city, where he remained between 1496 and 1501, he created his famous, delicate, and perfect Vatican Pieta.
In Florence, Michelangelo made a series of works “under” (such as the tondos executed for Thaddeus and Bartholomew Taddei, the Pitti, or the San Mateo for Santa Maria del Fiore), but the most remarkable among the pieces he created during this time was his monumental statue of David (1502-1504), a masterpiece of all imitative art of antiquity, possessing the implementation of perfection, beauty of form, and originality in its approach to type.
But Michelangelo was not only a sculptor (although he would have liked to be known as such in life). At this time, he was also commissioned by Piero Soderini to decorate part of the Great Hall of the Council in Florence with an episode of the war of Pisa, a project that Leonardo da Vinci was already working on. The cartoon of this work, a master of countless later artists, and the tendency to show the drama and tension of the bodies that would later be seen in his paintings, foreshadowed the Sistine Chapel.
Such was the admiration that Michelangelo raised among his contemporaries that Pope Julius II himself would become responsible for a project on a colossal scale, his tomb, which eventually commissioned only led to trouble and frustration for the artist. The Pope’s death, the disinterest of his successors in the completion of the mausoleum, the shortage of funds to carry out the original design, or the actual dispersion of the commissions that Julius II had given to Michelangelo with overlapping mandates of various orders, led to the execution of the works being spread over decades (1505-1550), reaching completion only in a modest version of the tomb materialized in a tomb wall sculpture that included, among others (mostly dispersed today), the Moses (c. 1513-1515).
Several commissions during this period kept Michelangelo away from the burial project, including the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, as requested by Pope Julius II as well. Michelangelo began work on the vault of the chapel in 1508 and completed it in 1512 (later, in 1534, having been commissioned to paint the wall of it, he executed a Mannerist Last Judgement). Despite the energy that the genius squandered in each of the projects he carried out, this one in particular can give a good idea of the strength of his character, his ability, and his determination.
Determined to make a fabulous decoration capable of astonishing those who see it and surpassing past, present, and future artists, he first had to learn the technique of fresco.
Following this second Roman period, he would experience another Florentine period (1513-1534), marked by the patronage of two popes, Leo X and Clement VII, for whom he carried out such works as the facade (not constructed) of the church of San Lorenzo, the construction of the stairway of the Laurentian Library (1524), or a series of tombs commemorating various members of the Medici family (who owned two separate popes). Remarkable are the allegorical sculptures made at this time to accompany the tombs of the Dukes Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici (special attention is drawn to the representation of the day, with his face disfigured in a clear allusion to the sun that dazzles the eye).
In his old age (1546), he undertook another major project: the completion of the construction of the basilica of St. Peter’s Cathedral, whose dome was later converted into a paradigm to be followed in much of the world.
Essentially, Michelangelo took the plan laid out by Bramante and visually enhanced it by removing the side towers and modifying the profiles, allowing the dome to be erected in the central axis of the composition.
Tired of men and disenchanted with the world, these years mark the beginning of a change, from the moment the freshness and strength of his compositions resulted in a torn mysticism, which, however, for many would result in some of his best works. It was his last day in Rome, where he arrived in 1534, remaining until his death.
ning until his death.