Michelangelo

Michelangelo (1475-1564), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and poet whose artistic

accomplishments exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent
European art. Michelangelo considered the male nude to be the foremost subject in art, and
he explored its range of movement and expression in every medium. Even his architecture
has a human aspect to it, in which a door, window, or support may refer to the face or body,
or the position of architectural elements may suggest muscular tension.

Michelangelo was an artist of extraordinary ability. He is known primarily as an outstanding

painter and sculptor, but he was also an accomplished architect and poet. He had a forceful
personality as well.

HE LOVED A CHALLENGE

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in Caprese, a village in Italy, in 1475. He grew up in

Florence, the artistic center of Europe during the 1400s. At 13, he began to train as a painter.

Michelangelo believed that the nude (naked) male figure was the most important subject in
art, and he loved a challenge. He preferred to create art that required hard work. For example,
he carved blocks of marble that other sculptors had rejected, and he created enormous
paintings on very high ceilings. In painting, he chose to put his figures in poses that were
especially difficult to draw. In carving, he cut away the stone in a way that seemed to release
a human figure trapped inside.

Michelangelo continually sought challenge, whether physical, artistic, or intellectual. He

favored media that required hard physical labor—marble carving and fresco painting. In
painting figures, he chose poses that were especially difficult to draw. And he gave his works
several layers of meaning, by including multiple references to mythology, religion, and other
subjects. His success in conquering the difficulties he set for himself is remarkable, but he
left many of his works unfinished, as if he were defeated by his own ambition.
HIS BEST WORK

Michelangelo’s early sculptures made him famous. His Pietà shows the dead Christ lying in
his mother’s lap. Michelangelo emphasizes Christ’s suffering through the limp, frail body
that is cradled by the Virgin Mary. Michelangelo carved a huge statue of the biblical hero
David. It shows the strong, young David calmly holding the slingshot he is about to use to
slay the giant warrior Goliath. The city of Florence displayed the statue of David as a symbol
of its political strength.

Michelangelo’s greatest challenge was to paint the gigantic ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in
Rome. To paint the Sistine Ceiling, he had to lie on his back on a wooden platform high in
the air. It took him nearly four years, but Michelangelo created some of the most memorable
images of all time. The Sistine Ceiling tells the biblical story of the Book of Genesis. It
begins with the creation of the world and finishes with the story of Noah. It contains almost
350 painted human figures, all of them larger than life-size.

Later, Michelangelo painted the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, on a wall above the
altar. This mural is filled with swirling nude bodies. Some rise from the grave to heaven.
Others descend in agony to hell. Michelangelo’s greatest architectural work was a design for
the dome of Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome.

Michelangelo died in 1564. He had an enormous influence on European artists of his time

and on those who came after him. After Michelangelo, artists competed with each other in
painting the human body in difficult poses.
Michelangelo’s David
One of Michelangelo’s best-known creations is the sculpture David. The marble statue of the
biblical hero is more than 15 feet (4.5 meters) tall.
Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Pietà
The sculpture Pietà was created by Michelangelo in his early 20s. The powerful piece shows
Mary holding the dead Christ in her arms.
Araldo de Luca/Corbis
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Michelangelo spent four years painting biblical scenes on the ceiling of the Vatican City’s
Sistine Chapel. The work features nearly 350 human figures, all larger than life-size.
Chris Wahlberg/Liaison Agency
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Last Judgment
Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is a large painting located on the altar wall of the Sistine
Chapel in Vatican City.
Livio Anticoli/Liaison Agency
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Michelangelo
I INTRODUCTION
Portrait of Michelangelo
Italian artist Michelangelo's extraordinary accomplishments in painting, sculpture, and
architecture made him one of the outstanding figures in Renaissance art. During his lifetime
(1475-1564) he influenced many young artists, including the Florentine writer and painter
Giorgio Vasari, who included this likeness of Michelangelo in one of his own works.
Palazzo Cancellaeria, Rome, Italy/Canali PhotoBank, Milan/SuperStock

Michelangelo (1475-1564), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and poet whose artistic

accomplishments exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent
European art. Michelangelo considered the male nude to be the foremost subject in art, and
he explored its range of movement and expression in every medium. Even his architecture
has a human aspect to it, in which a door, window, or support may refer to the face or body,
or the position of architectural elements may suggest muscular tension.

Michelangelo continually sought challenge, whether physical, artistic, or intellectual. He

favored media that required hard physical labor—marble carving and fresco painting. In
painting figures, he chose poses that were especially difficult to draw. And he gave his works
several layers of meaning, by including multiple references to mythology, religion, and other
subjects. His success in conquering the difficulties he set for himself is remarkable, but he
left many of his works unfinished, as if he were defeated by his own ambition.

II EARLY INFLUENCES

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in the small village of Caprese and grew up in Florence.
Florence was the artistic center of the early Renaissance, a period of outstanding artistic
innovation and accomplishment that began in the early 1400s. In many ways the masterpieces
that surrounded Michelangelo were his best teachers—ancient Greek and Roman statuary,
and the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of early Renaissance masters Masaccio,
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, and Filippo Brunelleschi. As a child he
preferred drawing to his schoolwork, despite his father's stern disapproval.

Eventually his father relented and allowed 13-year old Michelangelo to be apprenticed to

Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Michelangelo's time in Ghirlandaio's workshop
was marked with conflict, and his training there ended after only a year. Although he later
denied that Ghirlandaio had any influence on him, he surely learned the technique of fresco
painting from him, and his early drawings show some evidence of drawing methods used by
Ghirlandaio.

From 1490 to 1492 Michelangelo lived in the house of Lorenzo de' Medici (known as

Lorenzo the Magnificent), then the leading art patron of Florence. The Medici household was
a gathering place for artists, philosophers, and poets. During this time Michelangelo met and
perhaps studied with Bertoldo di Giovanni, an aging master who had trained with Donatello,
the greatest sculptor of 15th-century Florence. Other members of the Medici circle inspired in
Michelangelo a love of literature that he would develop in his poetry (a significant, if less-
accomplished art form for him). They also taught him the ideas of Neoplatonism—a
philosophy that regards the body as a trap for a soul that longs to return to God. Scholars
interpret many of Michelangelo's works in terms of these ideas, in particular, his human
figures that appear to break free from the stone that imprisons them.

Lorenzo de’ Medici wished to revive the art of sculpture in the classical manner of the

ancient Greeks and Romans (see Classic, Classical, and Classicism), and he had a collection
of ancient art that Michelangelo doubtless studied. Classical art provided an inspiration and a
standard of excellence that Michelangelo hoped to surpass. Some of his earliest sculptures
imitated classical works so closely that they were passed off as Roman originals. Later,
Michelangelo was on hand in Rome for the excavation of a massive ancient sculpture of
Laocoön (probably a Roman copy of a Greek original from the 2nd century BC, Vatican
Museums, Vatican City). This powerful grouping of the Trojan prince Laocoön and his two
sons, as they struggle to free themselves from huge snakes, provided a model of tense and
twisting bodies that Michelangelo used in many of his late works, including the Last
Judgment (1536-1541, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City).

Michelangelo was a very religious man, but he expressed his personal beliefs most clearly in
his late works. His late drawings are introspective meditations on Christian themes such as
the crucifixion, and in some works he inserted his own image as an onlooker in a religious
scene.

Throughout his career Michelangelo came in contact with learned and powerful men. His
patrons were wealthy businessmen, civic leaders, and church officials, including popes Julius
II, Clement VII (born Giulio de’ Medici, nephew of Lorenzo), and Paul III. Michelangelo
strove to be accepted among his patrons as a gentleman, producing a large body of poetry and
constructing a myth of noble ancestry. At the same time, he seemed to take pride in the
physical work of making art. For example, he preferred the dirty and exhausting art of marble
carving to that of panel painting, which he saw as something one could do in fine clothing.
This is one of many contradictions in his life, but it is also an indication of the changing
status of the artist—from craftsman to genius—that Michelangelo himself helped to bring
about.

III EARLY WORKS

After political events led to the expulsion of the powerful Medici family from Florence in
1494, Michelangelo traveled to Venice, Bologna, and finally to Rome. He produced his first
large-scale sculpture in Rome, a larger-than-life-size figure of a drunken Bacchus (1496-
1498, Museo Nazionale, Bargello, Florence), the Roman god of wine. This sensual, nude
youth is one of his few works of pagan rather than Christian subject matter and was based on
ancient Greek and Roman statuary.

A Pietà
Pietà
Pietà (1497-1500, Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City), created by Michelangelo in his early
20s, depicts Mary as a young woman holding the dead Christ in her arms. It is a remarkable
technical piece; the flesh under Christ’s shoulder just above Mary’s right hand seems to be
soft and pliable. It is also a work of great beauty, capable of eliciting a deeply emotional
response in the viewer.
Araldo de Luca/Corbis

One of Michelangelo’s most memorable early works is a Pietà (1497-1500, Saint Peter's

Basilica, Vatican City). The Pietà theme shows Christ in his mother’s lap, just after he is
taken down from the cross. The theme was popular in France and northern Europe. But the
two figures typically appeared awkward in northern art, with the body of a grown man lying
stiffly across the lap of a much smaller woman, and with the wounds of Christ exaggerated to
elicit a strong emotional response from the viewer. In contrast, Michelangelo's version shows
Mary grieving silently and makes Christ’s wounds barely visible. For intense emotionalism,
Michelangelo substituted restrained but eloquent gestures—the Virgin calls our attention to
her dead son with her left hand, while her right arm embraces him gently, lifting his arm
slightly so that it hangs lifelessly before us. Mary's full robe forms a broad base for Christ's
limp body, which curves slightly to wrap around hers, making the group graceful and
compact.

Michelangelo originally intended for the piece to be placed within a shallow niche, and
accordingly, he polished to a smooth finish all the surfaces that would have been visible and
gave meticulous care to the drapery. This high degree of finish is rarely present in
Michelangelo's work, and so probably reflects the tastes of the patron, a French cardinal who
had commissioned the sculpture to be placed on his tomb. Michelangelo returned to the
theme of the Pietà late in his life, in two of his most personal expressions: the Florentine
Pietà (1547?-1555, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence), which he meant to have placed
on his own tomb, and the Rondanini Pietà (1555-1564, Castello Sforzesco, Milan), a work
that remained unfinished when he died.

B David

Michelangelo’s David
One of Michelangelo’s best known creations is the sculpture David (1501-1504). The 5.17-m
(17-ft) tall marble statue shows an alert David waiting for his enemy Goliath. It originally
stood in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, but was later moved to the Galleria
dell’Accademia.
Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York
Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1501 to work on David (1501-1504, Galleria
dell’Accademia, Florence). The subject of this work is the Old Testament story of David and
Goliath, in which the young David, future king of Israel, flings a stone from his slingshot to
kill the giant Goliath, thereby saving his nation. The statue expresses not only the daring of
the young hero, but also of Michelangelo himself, who established himself as a master with
this work. This massive statue, which stands 5.17 meters (17 ft) tall, was carved from a block
of stone that another sculptor had left unfinished. Michelangelo drew on the classical
tradition in depicting David as a nude, standing with his weight on one leg, the other leg at
rest (see contrapposto). This pose suggests impending movement, and the entire sculpture
shows tense waiting, as David sizes up his enemy and considers his course of action.

While David reveals Michelangelo's expert knowledge of anatomy (he had been dissecting

corpses for about five years), the head and hands are much too large in comparison with the
torso. Critics have suggested several reasons for this inconsistency, but the most convincing
is that the statue was originally intended for the roof of the Florence Cathedral, and
exaggerating the head and hands made them more visible from a distance. The statue was
never placed there, but set instead in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, the center of
government in Florence. As a result its meaning changed: Rather than a religious image (it
would have been one of several Old Testament figures on the cathedral), it became a symbol
of the political strength of Florence against the forces of tyranny.

C The Tomb of Julius II

Michelangelo’s Moses
Italian artist Michelangelo’s Moses was completed around 1515. Originally intended to be
part of an immense sculptural tomb for Pope Julius II, it is in the church San Pietro in
Vincoli, Rome, Italy.
Scala/Art Resource, NY

In 1505 Michelangelo began work on a tomb for Pope Julius II that was to have stood in the
apse of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. Michelangelo’s earliest designs specify a freestanding
structure with three levels: at the bottom, figures representing victory alternating with slaves;
above them, four huge seated figures including Moses and Saint Paul; and finally, angels
supporting either a coffin or an image of the pope. In all there would have been about 40
figures on a structure nearly as tall as a three-story building. But the scope of the work was
drastically reduced as other projects delayed its completion.

In the end only three figures by Michelangelo's hand were placed on the tomb, which is now
in Rome’s church of San Pietro in Vincoli. Of these, the most powerful figure is Moses
(about 1515), a dynamic example of Michelangelo’s ability to infuse stone with a sense of
movement and life. The muscular torso of Moses twists to the left, but his scowling face turns
sharply to the right as if he has just seen the people worshiping their false god. His left leg is
drawn back, as if he were about to rise to his feet in anger.

Two of the slave statues originally planned for the tomb, the Rebellious Slave and the Dying
Slave (both about 1513-1516, Louvre, Paris, France), were also completed. They demonstrate
Michelangelo’s approach to carving, in which cutting away excess stone appears to release an
entrapped human figure. Here, as in many of his sculptures, Michelangelo left parts of the
block of stone rough and unfinished, either because he was satisfied with the statues as they
were or because he no longer planned to use them.

IV SISTINE CEILING
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Renaissance master Michelangelo devised an elaborate scheme for the decoration of the
Sistine Chapel ceiling, which he painted between 1508 and 1512. It features nine scenes from
the Biblical Book of Genesis, 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 images of prophets and sibyls on marble thrones, and by other biblical
subjects.
Chris Wahlberg/Liaison Agency

A major project preventing completion of the tomb of Julius II was a new commission from

Julius himself, to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Between 1508 and 1512
Michelangelo created some of the most memorable images of all time on the vaulted ceiling
of the papal chapel in the Vatican. His intricate system of decoration tells the biblical story of
Genesis, beginning with God separating light and dark (above the altar), progressing to the
story of Adam and Eve, and concluding with the story of Noah. Scenes from the biblical
stories of David, Judith, Esther, and Moses are depicted in the corners, while images of
prophets, sibyls (female prophets), and the ancestors of Christ are set in a painted
architectural framework above the windows. Bright, clear colors enliven and unify the vast
surface, and make the details more legible from the floor of the chapel.
Creation of Adam, Creation of Eve
Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes between
1508 and 1512. The frescoes are his interpretation of the biblical book of Genesis, the story
of the creation of the world. In the central scene shown here, God appears in human form as
he gives the breath of life to Adam, the first human being. The scene above it shows the first
woman, Eve, as she emerges from Adam's rib.
Chris Wahlberg/Liaison Agency

The  Creation of Adam from the Sistine Ceiling (1508-1512) is perhaps Michelangelo’s finest

fusion of form and meaning. Adam’s pose echoes both the shape of the ground on which he
reclines and the pose of God the Father, thus giving visual form to the biblical description of
Adam as made from the earth in the likeness of God. We see Adam beginning to come to life,
as he reaches listlessly toward the vigorous energy that the image of God embodies.

V CHURCH OF SAN LORENZO

Tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici
The tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici, designed and carved by Michelangelo, is one of four
elaborate works that the artist planned for the Medici Chapel in the Church of San Lorenzo,
Florence, Italy. Below the seated figure of Lorenzo de’ Medici, a major patron of the arts in
Florence, lie figures representing Dusk and Dawn. Michelangelo began work on the chapel in
1519 and continued to work on it intermittently, but he left Florence for Rome in 1534, with
major portions of his design still unfinished.
Cappella Medici, Florence/Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York

The Tomb of Julius II required architectural planning, but Michelangelo’s activity as an

architect began in earnest with a plan for the facade of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence
(designed 1516-1520, but never executed). Michelangelo probably had no formal training as
an architect, but during the Renaissance it was not unusual for artists to be given architectural
commissions simply because they had demonstrated the ability to draw and create designs.
Michelangelo envisioned the San Lorenzo facade as a two-story marble screen supporting as
many as 40 statues.
By 1520 funding was discontinued for the San Lorenzo facade, but Michelangelo remained
occupied with other projects for this church. The commission for a sacristy (1519-1534) for
San Lorenzo included plans for Medici family tombs. As did many of Michelangelo’s
designs, this one went through numerous changes before it was executed, but in the end it
consisted of two large wall tombs facing each other across a high, domed room. One was
intended for Giuliano de’ Medici (duke of Nemours), the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent; the
other for Giuliano’s nephew Lorenzo (di Piero) de’ Medici (duke of Urbino). Michelangelo
conceived of the two tombs as representing opposite types: Giuliano symbolized the active,
extroverted personality, Lorenzo , the contemplative, introspective one. He placed nudes
representing Day and Night beneath Giuliano; nudes representing Dawn and Dusk beneath a
seated Lorenzo. Plans for reclining river gods at the base of each tomb were never executed.

Laurentian Library
Michelangelo designed the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy between 1524 and 1534. In
the entry hall to the library shown here, Michelangelo alternated curves and right angles,
concave and convex forms to create a sense of movement and tension.
Scala/Art Resource, NY
The elegant Laurentian Library (designed 1524-1534), adjoining the Church of San Lorenzo,
confirmed Michelangelo’s architectural abilities. In this and subsequent architectural projects,
he combined classical motifs–columns, pediments, niches, and brackets—in new ways and
distorted their relative proportions to give his architecture the surging energy of his sculpture
and painting. In the entrance hall of the library, he invented new forms for the capitals of
columns and tapered the pilasters (flattened pillars attached to walls) downward instead of
upward. The curving contours of the central staircase seem to flow downward and outward,
while rectilinear steps to its sides maintain a steady, upward march, giving a sense of checked
energy.

VI THE LAST JUDGMENT

Last Judgment
Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, the large fresco on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, dates
from 1536-1541—about 30 years after the famous ceiling frescoes were painted. This
painting of judgment day, with its grotesque and twisted figures, represents one of the earliest
examples of Mannerist art. Christ stands in the center of the fresco meting out justice, while
the saved rise on the left and the damned descend on the right.
Livio Anticoli/Liaison Agency
Michelangelo was again called to work in the Sistine Chapel in 1534, when Clement VII
(born Giulio de’ Medici, nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent) commissioned him to paint the
wall above the altar. The Last Judgment (1536-1541), with which Michelangelo covered the
wall, depicts Christ's second coming at the end of the world. The enormous scene is focused
on the impassive figure of Christ whose right arm is poised to strike down the damned, while
the left arm seems gently to call the blessed toward him. At his side is the Virgin Mary,
traditionally included as a figure of mercy at the Last Judgment; she quietly looks downward
toward those who emerge from their graves. The nude bodies of the saints and the figures
rising to heaven are massive, perhaps to emphasize the belief that their physical bodies would
be revived in a glorified state. The scene of hell in the lower right corner does not show Satan
or various hellish torments as was customary, but is based instead on the Inferno, part of an
early 14th-century epic poem, The Divine Comedy, by Italian writer Dante Alighieri. This and
many other aspects of the Last Judgment (especially the nudity) were sharply criticized soon
after the fresco was unveiled and helped it become one of the most talked about and most
frequently copied works of art in the 16th century.

VII PIAZZA DEL CAMPIDOGLIO

Piazza del Campidoglio

This view of the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, Italy, is from the Palazzo dei Senatori.
Italian artist and architect Michelangelo designed the Palazzo Nuovo, right, and the identical
facade for the Palazzo dei Conservatori, left, to create a unified space focused on an ancient
statue of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Michelangelo also designed a new base for the
statue, which had been removed from its base for restoration at the time this photograph was
taken.
Gaetano di Filippo/Grazia Neri

Michelangelo’s designs for the Piazza del Campidoglio (begun 1539, completed later by
others) and its surrounding buildings succeeded in restoring this public space to its former
role as the civic and political heart of Rome. Michelangelo’s program for remodeling the
Campidoglio (Italian for “capitol”) began with a commission to create a new base for an
ancient Roman bronze statue of emperor Marcus Aurelius on horseback. His plans soon
expanded to include the addition of a double staircase to the building behind the statue,
Palazzo Senatorio (completed 1544-1552); new and identical facades for the buildings to the
sculpture’s right and left, the Palazzo dei Conservatori (1563-1584) and the Palazzo Nuovo
(1603-1650s); and finally a broad, ramplike stairway defines the uphill approach to the
piazza.

The oval base Michelangelo designed for the statue of Marcus Aurelius became the basis for
his design of the entire space. He placed the statue at the center of the piazza, which was
paved in an oval pattern of radiating and interlocking lines. Approaching the piazza from the
steps below, visitors are drawn into the receding space created by twin palaces, which angle
subtly outward, and toward the staircase at either side of the Palazzo Senatorio. Perfect
symmetry combines with flowing curves, traditional Roman forms with inventive new ones,
to produce a unified and dynamic public space.

VIII SAINT PETER’S BASILICA

Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome
In 1506 architect Donato Bramante, under commission from Pope Julius II, designed Saint
Peter’s, located in Vatican City, within the city of Rome. Bramante died before completing
the church, so Florentine artist Michelangelo assumed the supervisory role in 1546. His
design simplified and unified the architectural elements of Bramante’s plan for the basilica
and created a structure of monumental proportions. Michelangelo’s innovative design for the
enormous ribbed dome of Saint Peter’s influenced dome design and construction for the next
300 years.
THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

In 1546 Michelangelo was given the task of completing the design for Saint Peter’s Basilica
in the Vatican. Pope Julius II first gave the commission to Michelangelo’s rival, Donato
Bramante, in 1506. Bramante envisioned a church based upon a Greek cross (a cross with all
four arms of equal length) and surmounted by a great dome. When Bramante died in 1514,
only the enormous supports for the dome were in place, but these determined the scale and
other elements of the design. At least three other architects contributed to the design before
Michelangelo took over, with the most recent one having added a long nave to the church.
Michelangelo returned to Bramante's plan, but made it more compact, strengthening the
supports and unifying the exterior with gigantic pairs of pilasters with Corinthian capitals.
The pilasters alternate with large openings topped with pediments (triangular forms). Around
the base of the dome the line of the pilasters is echoed by fully rounded columns, which are
in turn repeated on a smaller scale in the lantern at the top of the dome. The effect is one of
great mass pushing upward, the forms varied in complex ways yet unified as a whole.

IX DRAWINGS

Divine Head
Michelangelo created presentation drawings as gifts for friends. One such drawing, Divine
Head (1530?, British Museum, London) represents the artist’s idea of a perfect female form.
He has left the woman's hat and clothing relatively unfinished in order to focus attention on
the beautifully rendered contours of her face and neck.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK/Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York

Throughout his life, Michelangelo produced drawings of all sorts, including quick pen

sketches, composition drawings, careful studies of anatomy, and architectural plans and
elevations. In a special category, however, are the highly finished presentation drawings,
meant to be seen as complete works of art and given as gifts to his closest friends. Some of
these drawings represent classical myths, but he selected these myths and sometimes
reshaped them to reflect personal meanings or to express Neoplatonic ideas. Others represent
idealized human beings. An example is the Divine Head (1530?, British Museum, London), a
drawing of a female paired with the male Count of Canossa (original drawing lost). Using
short strokes of chalk that are precisely modulated (varied in tone) and stippling (dots or
flecks), Michelangelo creates an image of perfection. These are imaginative works, showing
the skill of the artist both in the meticulous rendering of surfaces and in the wildly creative
hairstyles or helmets he gives them.

X INFLUENCE

Michelangelo's influence on his contemporaries and on later artists was profound. Mannerism

was an art movement based on exaggeration of aspects of the style of Michelangelo and other
artists of the late Renaissance. The mannerists were particularly drawn to the complex poses
and elongated elegance of some of his figures. Later artists, including Annibale Carracci and
Peter Paul Rubens, emulated the powerful strength of his figures but combined it with the
graceful line of Raphael or the colors used by Titian, two of Michelangelo’s contemporaries.
But perhaps Michelangelo's greatest legacy to later artists is the image of the genius that he
and those around him fashioned. Brooding, isolated, challenging, temperamental—these are
the words that described Michelangelo’s character and that we still use to describe artists
seized by an inspiration that seems more than human.

Bernadine Barnes
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Michelangelo Drawing
This pencil drawing was done by the Renaissance Italian master Michelangelo. Although the
drawing is incomplete, the artist’s skill can be seen in the rendering of the face and the
handling of light and shadow. Michelangelo’s drawings are believed by most art historians to
be studies rather than finished works of art.
Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Vasari’s Portrait of Michelangelo

Florentine writer and painter Giorgio Vasari documented the lives of Italian Renaissance
artists in both his writings and paintings. He included this likeness of Michelangelo in a
larger wall painting.
Palazzo Cancellaeria, Rome, Italy/Canali PhotoBank, Milan/SuperStock
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.