MICHELANGELO, Buonarroti, anle-16 or me-kel-an boo-o-nar-rO'te, whose name during his lifetime was written as Michelagnolo (or Michelangiolo) di Ludovico di Buonarroti-Simoni; Italian sculptor, painter and architect : b. Caprese, Tuscany, 6 March 1475; d. Rome, 18 Feb. 1564. The family was well established as a family of citizens in Flor ence; but had been allowed heraldic bearings, a custom not unusual in relation to the control ling families of the Italian cities.
At a very early age Michelangelo became a student of fine art, entering first the workshop of Domenico Bigordi, called Ghirlandajo, and studying also in a primitive kind of art school which had been formed in the palace and gar dens of Lorenzo dei Medici. It appears that the extraordinary abilities of the boy were noticed by his patrons and also by the artists of the epoch from the first. Michelangelo thought of himself only as a sculptor, and he put his energies into the study of bas-relief and statuary; studying the remains of Graeco Roman antiquity which were accessible, and producing works of such importance as caused surprise to his contemporaries, although most of these very early works are either lost alto gether or are uncertain — pieces which are usually ascribed to this epoch not having cer tain ascriptions. The earliest very important work which has remained to us is the Pieta, which is now in a chapel of- Saint Peter's Church at Rome. The figures are slightly larger than life, the Madonna holding the body of Christ on her lap in a not unusual attitude; a belt passing over the left shoulder of the Virgin is inscribed with the name of Michel angelo the Florentine: which is for years the only case in which Michelangelo signed a piece with his name. The famous group of the Madonna and Child in the Church of Notre Dame at Bruges, in Belgium, is generally ac cepted as the work of Michelangelo, and if so, was of this early epoch. The reason for its transportation to Bruges is disputed. An en tirely authentic piece of the time is a colossal David, which having been for three centuries in the open air at the portal of the Palazzo Vec chio at Florence, is now under shelter in the Accademia in the same city. This extraordinary work is a frank attempt to render the as yet imperfectly developed form of a very young man.
The only portable painting which can with certainty be ascribed to Michelangelo belongs to the closing years of the 15th century, when Michelangelo was approaching the age of 25 years. This is the circular picture, a Madonna with the Child and Saint Joseph, in the Uffizi Gallery. The fact of his producing this and several other small works of painting is not to be counted against his accepted position as a sculptor; for most of the artists of the time practised in the different arts, and it is probable that Michelangelo was at this time much less in the habit of painting than were other sculp tors of well-known ability. His own continual occupation upon works of pure form in marble was a sufficient reason for his continued absten tion from the sister arts.
With the election of Pope Julius II began the Roman life of Michelangelo, for he was called upon by the new Pope in 1505 to build a great monument which the Pope desired to finish within his own lifetime. This monu ment was never completed, however, and the controversies and other difficulties which arose continually with regard to it, embittered a large part of the great artist's life and consumed time which could but ill be spared from actual work. The great statue of Moses, which was executed at a somewhat later time (not to be exactly fixed), was the only very important piece of statuary completed for this tomb.
In 1506 Michelangelo returned to Florence, and at that time there was a decided pause in the work upon the tomb, as other thoughts had taken up the mind of the Pope. Indeed, his return to Rome was followed immediately by the commencement of the painting upon the vault of the Sistine Chapel. This work as we have it is much the most important piece of mural painting of the modern world, for it occupies the whole vaulted room, 133 feet long and 45 feet and is one continuous and unbroken composition containing hundreds of figures, life-size, of heroic size, and colossal, and done in pure fresco, except as it has been retouched in places, either by the artist himself or in later times, in what is called dry fresco— that is to say, the colors laid upon the dry plas ter. There is this marked, characteristic of the painting — that it has no landscape backgrounds except in the small compartments devoted to The Deluge and The Temptation, nor any other accessories as of costume, arms, i the like, but is everywhere a simple architec tural composition of painted pedestals and corbels seeming to carry figures which them selves are painted in the most abstract way— studies of the human form simply dressed and having no artistic interest other than that. It has generally been considered that the paintings draw their only importance from the astonish ing power of the draughtsmanship and the great composition of abstract lines; but a more care ful consideration of what they were t :lore their partial defacement by the smoke of can dles and the injuries and repairs which they have received, shows that the work is one of interest as to color composition as well. Michelangelo has never shown himself to be a colorist in the sense in which Correggio and the great Venetians were colorists, but then the medium in which he painted was fresco, that is, painting upon wet plaster, which does not lend itself to elaborate combinations of warm and profuse coloring— its tendency is always to ward pale combinations and the expression of delicately modulated form rather than of chro matic splendor. It is not, however, intelligent criticism to say that these paintings are the work of a sculptor taken rudely from the practice of his own art. On the other hand, it is quite un reasonable to say, as some English critics have said, that the turning of Michelangelo to sculp ture had been unfortunate, as depriving us of the greatest of Christian religious painters while giving us only a melodramatic sculptor. The truth is that this artist is the most perfect exemplar of that way of treating all fine art, of which form alone (pure and abstract and al most separated from its usual purpose, as that of description and narrative), is the subject studied and gives the effect sought. Every thing else — truth of anatomy, expression of face, energy of pose and of apparent movement — is subordinated to the one important thing, the getting of form which would he splendid in the artist's eyes. If, then, we have to regret a frequent excessiveness and extravagance of design, it can only be said that the extraor dinary energy and force of the man, driving him on to undertake more than mortal man could achieve even had he been (as Michel angelo was not) left to pursue his own course in peace, resulted as of necessity in frequent exaggeration in the very desire to give vigor and as yet untried combinations of form as shown in the human body posed singly or in elaborate groups.