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St Anne with the Virgin and the Christ Child
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St_Anne_with_the_Virgin_and_the_Christ_Child
1505 Pen, 254 x 177 mm Ashmolean Museum, Oxford The challenge of this subject is the placement of one grown woman on the lap of another without creating an awkward appearance. Michelangelo dealt with a similar problem already in his Roman Piete a subject which required the placement of an adult male on the lap of a woman. Artist: MICHELANGELO Buonarroti Title: St Anne with the Virgin and the Christ Child Date: 1501-1550 Italian , graphics : religious
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Study for a Madonna and Child
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Study_for_a_Madonna_and_Child
1533 Black chalk on paper British Museum, London Artist: MICHELANGELO Buonarroti Title: Study for a Madonna and Child Date: 1501-1550 Italian , graphics : study
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Study for the Colonna Piet
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Study_for_the_Colonna_Piet
1538 Chalk Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston In 1538, three years before the completion of the Last Judgment, Michelangelo had met Vittoria Colonna. She belonged to the circle of Juan Valdes, who was striving towards an internal reform of the Catholic Church. To put it very simply, one can say that the main conviction of this theological trend was the idea of the utmost need of faith, as opposed to good deeds or sacraments, because, in the last resort, it is only divine grace which is all-powerful. These almost protestant beliefs could not conquer, or in any way change, Michelangelo because too much of his work would have had to be denied. However, they must have to some extent disrupted his firm belief, as he had expressed it in his works, that by creating perfect physical beauty he had represented the essence of the supernatural and of the divine. It is true, however, that he felt the need for divine grace, and, from this point onwards, this had great bearing on his creative life. We find evidence of this in a drawing of the Piete made for Vittoria Colonna. When compared with the 1499 Piete we see clearly that the main objective is the thought of the Compassionate Christ and of the Redemption through Christ's Blood. The work turns openly towards the onlooker to admonish him, drawing his attention to the sacrifice of Golgotha. Artist: MICHELANGELO Buonarroti Title: Study for the Colonna Piete Date: 1501-1550 Italian , graphics : study
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The Conversion of Saul
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The_Conversion_of_Saul
1542-45 Fresco, width of detail 114 cm Cappella Paolina, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican The detail shows soldiers on the left side of the fresco. Artist: MICHELANGELO Buonarroti Title: The Conversion of Saul (detail) Date: 1501-1550 Italian , painting : religious
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The Conversion of Saul
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The_Conversion_of_Saul
1542-45 Fresco, width of detail 101 cm Cappella Paolina, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican The detail shows St Paul and a soldier. Artist: MICHELANGELO Buonarroti Title: The Conversion of Saul (detail) Date: 1501-1550 Italian , painting : religious
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Michelangelo_Buonarroti
b Caprese 1475 d Rome 1564
Born: March 6, 1475
Caprese, Italy
Died: February 18, 1564
Rome, Italy
Italian artist
Michelangelo was one of the greatest sculptors of the Italian Renaissance and one of its greatest painters and architects.
Early life
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy, a village where his father, Lodovico Buonarroti, was briefly serving as a Florentine government agent. The family moved back to Florence before Michelangelo was one month old. Michelangelo's mother died when he was six. From his childhood Michelangelo was drawn to the arts, but his father considered this pursuit below the family's social status and tried to discourage him. However, Michelangelo prevailed and was apprenticed (worked to learn a trade) at the age of thirteen to Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449?C1494), the most fashionable painter in Florence at the time.
After a year Michelangelo's apprenticeship was broken off. The boy was given access to the collection of ancient Roman sculpture of the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici (1449?C1492). He dined with the family and was looked after by the retired sculptor who was in charge of the collection. This arrangement was quite unusual at the time.
Early works
Michelangelo's earliest sculpture, the Battle of the Centaurs (mythological creatures that are part man and part horse), a stone work created when he was about seventeen, is regarded as remarkable for the simple, solid forms and squarish proportions of the figures, which add intensity to their violent interaction.
Soon after Lorenzo died in 1492, the Medici family fell from power and Michelangelo fled to Bologna. In 1494 he carved three saints for the church of San Domenico. They show dense forms, in contrast to the linear forms which were then dominant in sculpture.
Rome
After returning to Florence briefly, Michelangelo moved to Rome. There he carved a Bacchus for a banker's garden of ancient sculpture. This is Michelangelo's earliest surviving large-scale work, and his only sculpture meant to be viewed from all sides.
In 1498 the same banker commissioned Michelangelo to carve the Piet?? now in St. Peter's. The term piet?? refers to a type of image in which Mary supports the dead Christ across her knees. Larger than life size, the Piet?? contains elements which contrast and reinforce each other: vertical and horizontal, cloth and skin, alive and dead, female and male.
Florence
On Michelangelo's return to Florence in 1501 he was recognized as the most talented sculptor of central Italy. He was commissioned to carve the David for the Florence Cathedral.
Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina was commissioned in 1504; several sketches still exist. The central scene shows a group of muscular soldiers climbing from a river where they had been swimming to answer a military alarm. This fusion of life with colossal grandeur henceforth was the special quality of Michelangelo's art.
From this time on, Michelangelo's work consisted mainly of very large projects that he never finished. He was unable to turn down the vast commissions of his great clients which appealed to his preference for the grand scale.
Pope Julius II (1443?C1513) called Michelangelo to Rome in 1505 to design his tomb, which was to include about forty life-size statues. Michelangelo worked on the project off and on for the next forty years.
Sistine Chapel
In 1508 Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to decorate the ceiling of the chief Vatican chapel, the Sistine. The traditional format of ceiling painting contained only single figures. Michelangelo introduced dramatic scenes and an original framing system, which was his earliest architectural design. The chief elements are twelve male and female prophets (the latter known as sibyls) and nine stories from Genesis.
Michelangelo stopped for some months halfway along. When he returned to the ceiling, his style underwent a shift toward a more forceful grandeur and a richer emotional tension than in any previous work. The images of the Separation of Light and Darkness, and Ezekiel illustrate this greater freedom and mobility.
After the ceiling was completed in 1512, Michelangelo returned to the tomb of Julius and carved a Moses and two Slaves. His models were the same physical types he used for the prophets and their attendants in the Sistine ceiling. Julius's death in 1513 halted the work on his tomb.
Pope Leo X, son of Lorenzo de' Medici, proposed a marble facade for the family parish church of San Lorenzo in Florence to be decorated with statues by Michelangelo. After four years of quarrying and designing the project was canceled.
Medici Chapel
In 1520 Michelangelo was commissioned to execute the Medici Chapel for two young Medici dukes. It contains two tombs, each with an image of the deceased and two allegorical (symbolic) figures: Day and Night on one tomb, and Morning and Evening on the other.
A library, the Biblioteca Laurenziana, was built at the same time on the opposite side of San Lorenzo to house Pope Leo X's books. The entrance hall and staircase are some of Michelangelo's most astonishing architecture, with recessed columns resting on scroll brackets set halfway up the wall and corners stretched open rather than sealed.
Poetry
Michelangelo wrote many poems in the 1530s and 1540s. Approximately three hundred survive. The earlier poems are on the theme of Neoplatonic love (belief that the soul comes from a single undivided source to which it can unite again) and are full of logical contradictions and intricate images. The later poems are Christian. Their mood is penitent (being sorrow and regretful); and they are written in a simple, direct style.
Last Judgment
In 1534 Michelangelo left Florence for the last time, settling in Rome. The next ten years were mainly given over to painting for Pope Paul III (1468?C1549).
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