Michelangelo

Michelangelo Buonarroti, the greatest of the Italian Renaissance artists, was born on March 6, 1475, in the small village of Caprese (Today, Caprese is known as Caprese Michelangelo or Tuscany, Italy). Michelangelo grew up in Florence, Italy. His Father was a government administrator and his Mother died when he was only six years old. After the death of his mother Michelangelo lived with a stone cutter and his family in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and small farm. Along with living with a stone cutter (where he learned to handle marble), Michelangelo's influences included da Vinci and Dominico Ghirlandaio. Michelangelo showed no interest in school, he preferred to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of painters. His artistic talents were noticed at a very early age. At the age of thirteen, Michelangelo was apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. At age fourteen Michelangelo’s father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo as an artist, which was unusual at the time.
Demonstrating obvious talent, he was taken under the wing of Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of the Florentine republic and a great patron of the arts. For two years beginning in 1490, he lived in the Medici palace and attended the Humanist academy, where he was a student of the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni and studied the Medici art collection, which included ancient Roman statuary. At the academy, both Michelangelo’s outlook and his art was influenced by many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day. At this time Michelangelo sculpted the Madonna of the Steps (1490-1492) and Battle of the Centaurs (1491-1492).
Lorenzo de Medici, the man who gave Michelangelo the tools and schooling to perfect his artistry, passed away in 1492. Michelangelo decided that it was time to return home to his family, but he continued studying on his own. Although the practice was forbidden at the time by the church, Michelangelo got special