Michael Angelo and Art

Introduction

Michelangelo was known as one of the greatest artists ever known because of his great work in the areas of sculpting, painting, architecture, and poetry. He has created many great paintings and wrote many poems which lasted over seventy years, and he was able to change his style to fit the period of time. As an artist he was unmatched, the creator of works of sublime beauty that express the full breadth of the human condition. (Néret, 33)

Michael Angelo and Art

Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475, in Rome. When Michelangelo was young, his dad, Ludovico Buonarroti, placed him in an art workshop. Michelangelo began to study sculpture at a special school at the Medici Garden. After a short stay in the class, he was invited to stay at the house of Lorenzo De' Medici, a great painter. As a student in Rome he was called the "Universal Genius". He was a great sculpture early in life, and then he learned how to draw and paint. Michelangelo was also a very religious man. He was a Catholic and most of his drawings and paintings resemble his beliefs in his art work. Michelangelo embodied many characteristic qualities of the Renaissance. He was an individualistic, highly competitive genius (sometimes to the point of eccentricity). Michelangelo was not afraid to show humanity in its natural state - nakedness; even in front of the Pope and the other religious leaders. Michelangelo portrayed life as it is, even with its troubles. Michelangelo wanted to express his own artistic ideas. (Néret, 33)

From 1508 through 1512, Michelangelo's time was occupied by The Sistine Chapel Ceiling. The Sistine Ceiling is one of Michelangelo's greatest paintings. It is probably his most well known piece of art. The most puzzling thing about Michelangelo's ceiling design is the great number of seemingly irrelevant nude figures that he included in his gigantic fresco. (Tolnay, 22) Four youths frame most of the Genesis scenes. We know from historical records that various church officials objected to the many nudes, but Pope Julius gave Michelangelo artistic freedom, and eventually ruled the chapel off limits to anyone save himself, until the painting was completed. The many nude figures are referred to as Ignudi. They are naked humans, perhaps representing the naked truth. More likely, I think they represent Michelangelo's concept of the human potential for perfection. Michelangelo then painted the Last Judgment, the large fresco on the altar wall of the Sistine. The painting represents one of the earliest examples of mannerist art. This is an alarming view of Judgment Day, with grotesque and twisted figures. While Christ stands in the center of the fresco meting out justice, the saved rise on the left and the damned descend on the right. (Summers, 59)

Michelangelo is widely considered to be a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture, and one of Michelangelo's greatest works of sculpture is of the famous statue David. In 1501, (Stone, 132) 25-year-old Michelangelo Buonarroti begins working on his colossal masterpiece, the 17-foot-tall marble ...