Michelangelo Research Paper

Michelangelo: Biography of a Talented Artist

During the dates 1475-1564 there were many famous painters working all around the world. One of which was Michelangelo. He painted and sculpted many famous items that are still talked about today. Michelangelo led a very busy life, as of which you will be reading about today. Michelangelo was born in 1475 in a small village of Caprese near Arezzo At the age of 13 Michelangelo's father Ludovico Buonarroti placed Michelangelo in the workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio through connections with the ruling Medici family. About two years later Michelangelo studied at the sculpture school in the Medici gardens. Shortly thereafter he was invited into the household of the magnificent, Lorenzo
In 1505 the Pope Julius II recalled Michelangelo to Rome for two commissions. The most important one was for the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He worked high above the chapel floor, lying on his back on scaffolding painting for 5 years. Michelangelo painted some of the finest pictorial images of all time between "1508-1512." On the vault of the of the papal chapel, he devised an intricate system of decoration that included nine scenes from the book of Genesis, beginning with the God Separating Light from darkness and including the creation of Adam, the creation of eve, the temptation and fall of Adam and eve, and the flood. These centrally located narratives are surrounded by alternating images of prophets and sibyls on marble thrones, by other Old Testament subjects, and by the studies and cartoons, devising scores of figure types and poses. These awesome, mighty images, demonstrating Michelangelo's masterly understanding of human anatomy and movement, changed the course of painting in the West. Before the assignment of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1505, Michelangelo had been commissioned by Julius II to produce his tomb, which was
When Michelangelo went back to work on the tomb, he redesigned it on a much more modest scale. Nevertheless, Michelangelo made some of his finest sculpture for the Julius tomb, including the Moses (1515), the central figure in the much reduced monument now located in Rome's church of San Pietro in Vincoli. The muscular patriarch sits alertly in a shallow niche, holding in its hands the tablets of the Ten Commandments, his long beard entwined in his powerful hands. He looks as if he was communicating with god. Two other statues, The Bound Slave and The Dying Slave (both structured in 1510-1513) demonstrate Michelangelo's approach to carving. He left both statues unfinished either because he was satisfied with them as is, or because he no longer planned to use them. The project for the Julius Tomb required architectural planning, but Michelangelo's activity as an architect began in 1519, with the plan for the façade of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, where he had once again moved to. In the 1520's he also designed the Laurentian Library and its elegant entrance hall adjoining San Lorenzo. After the completion of these objects Michelangelo took as a starting point thee wall articulation of his Florentine Predecessors, but he infused it with the same surging energy