MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI, mt." n'je-b% her nun ( NItet I El. ANGELO) ( 1173.1561). A Florentine sculptor. painter.
architect. and poet. the most prominent artist of the Renaissanee, and the most influential 1boire in modern art. Ile was horn at Caprese. March 6. 1475. the son of Lodovieo Purmarroti. Ilk family. the Hurmarroli,Simoni. held small landed pm:sessions. and had long been honorably identified with public office in Florence. At the time of Michelangelo's birth his father was Podesta (governor) of Chiusi and Caprese, Tus can mountain towns tributary to Florence.. The infant as christened Michelagnuolo, and upon his father's return to Florence was put to nurse with the wife of a stonemason of Settignano, im bibing. as he himself said, the love of sculpture with his nurse's milk. Destined for a scholar, lie was then placed in the school of Francesco d'Urbino at Florence. Instead of devoting him self to hooks, he spent his time drawing, and with painters' apprentices. By one of these, Francesco Granacci, with whom lie had formed a friendship, he was introduced to the studio of the brothers Ghirlandajn, and after much opposi tion on the part of his family, he was, in 1488, apprenticed to these masters. He does not appear to have learned much from his master Domenico Chirlandajo. His drawings while there excited admiration and surprise, as did also his first painting, a transcript on panel of :Martin Schon gauer's print, the "Temptation of Saint An thony." In company with Granacci, Michelangelo left Ghirlandajo's studio in 1489, to study sculpture in the garden of the Medici at San Marco. With the design of reviving sculpture, which had fallen behind painting at Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici had established an academy there, at the head of which lie placed Bertoldo, a pupil of Do natello. A marble masque of a faun (Uffizi), which Michelangelo skillfully changed in accord ance with the advice of Lorenzo. so pleased the latter that he invited him to live in his house, and procured his father a place in the Florentine customs. In the society of such men as Poliziano, the poet, Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, the Platonist, and Lorenzo himself, he became familiar with Italian literature and humanist culture. He was also influenced by the great political and religious movements of the day. To the spell of Savonarola's eloquence may be at tributed, at least in part, his intense love for Florentine liberty and his deep religious feeling. His artistic training was an admirable combina tion of Florentine realistic and classic influences. Through Bertoldo lie became grounded in the works of Donatello; he studied the antique in the Medici collection, and sketched Masaceio's fres coes in the Braneacei Chapel. lle was also, per haps at this early period, and certainly later in his career, influenced by the painting of Luca Sigmo•elli, of manner his own is a develop ment in its most essential features. Of the two
surviving works of his student days—both bas reliefs now in the Casa Buonarroti, Florence— the seated "'Madonna with the Infant is in the manner of Donatello. The other, the so called "Battle of the Centaurs," is in the over rich style of late Roman reliefs. which were doubtless his models; but it shows the great, though still incipient, dramatic talent which marked his later works.
On the death of Lorenzo in 1492 Michelangelo returned to his father's house. Besides carving a statue of a Ilercules, now lost, lie devoted much time to the study of anatomy. In 1494 lie returned to the palace of the Medici. hut, fright ened at a vision foretelling their destruction, in October of the same year he fled to Bologna, and thence to Venice. At Bologna he found employ ment for almost a year upon the shrine of San Domenico. lle completed a statue of San Petro nio by Nicola da Bari, and carved a kneeling angel of rare beauty, bearing a candelabrum, which, as Grimm has shown, was long confounded with another by Nicola l'isano in the same church. In 1495, after his return to Florence. he carved for Lorenzo de' Medici, of a younger branch of the family, a statue of the youthful Saint John, now in the Berlin IISP11111, realistic in style and much in the manner of Donatello. The sale of his next work, of which the original is lost, caused his first journey to Rome, and during his stay there, which lasted till the spring of 1501, lie executed a number of important works. For .Jacopo Galli he carved the "Bacchus" in the Museo Nazionale, Florence, a statue realistic to the verge of ugliness, and lacking entirely the ele ment of divinity. To the same period belongs the well-known statue in South Kensington Mu seum, which may be the "Cupid" that Condivi says lie executed for Jacopo Galli, although Springer has shown that it is more probably an "Apollo." The subject represented is a beautiful youth kneeling in the act of discharging his bow. But the chief work of this early Roman period, which raised him to the rank of the greatest sculp tor of the day, was the "Pietli" in Saint Peter's Church (1498-99). the first group, in the highest sense of the word, in modern sculpture. Seated at the foot of the Cross. the Virgin is represented with the dead Christ in her lap, gazing sadly at llis wounded side and gently raising her hand. She is of youthful appearance, and of more heroic proportions than her son, whose dead body, the flesh of which is treated with marvelous delicacy, is reduced in size, to preserve the harmony of the group.