Was born at Castel Caprese, near Arezzo, in 1475. In 1488 he entered
the school of Ghirlandaio, the master giving a small payment for the
boy’s services. His precocious abilities soon attracted the notice
of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and until the death of that prince in 1492,
Michelangelo worked under his especial patronage. His earliest drawings
show a spontaneous power which made Fuseli say that “as an artist he
had no infancy;” but for many years he confined himself almost entirely
to sculpture; and some of his greatest achievements in that kind of art
were executed before he undertook his first considerable work with the
pencil. This was the “Cartoon of Pisa,” finished in 1505, and intended as
a design for a mural picture to face that of Leonardo in the Council Hall
at Florence. This cartoon is lost, but a copy in monochrome, containing
probably the whole of the composition, exists in England. During its
progress he had broken off to visit Rome, and execute some sculptural
work for the pope; and in 1508 he went to Rome again to begin the
great achievement of his life, the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. The
paintings of the ceiling illustrate the Creation and the Fall of Man,
together with other scenes and figures typical of the Redemption. The
middle part of the ceiling is divided into nine compartments, containing
the “Creation of Eve” (placed in the center, as symbolizing the woman
of whom the Messiah was born), the “Creation of Adam,” the “Temptation,
Fall and Expulsion” in one composition, the “Separation of Light from
Darkness,” the “Gathering of the Waters,” the “Creation of the Sun and
Moon,” the “Deluge,” the “Thanksgiving of Noah,” and the “Drunkenness
of Noah.” At the corners of the ceiling are four designs of the great
deliverances of the children of Israel, the Brazen Serpent, David and
Goliath, Judith with the head of Holofernes, and the punishment of
Haman. There are six windows on each side of the chapel; the lunettes
which surround them, and the spaces above them, are occupied by groups
of the ancestors of Christ. Between the windows, at the springing of
the vault, are colossal seated figures of the Prophets and Sibyls who
foretold the coming of the Savior. They are arranged alternately as
follows:—Jeremiah, Persian Sibyl, Ezekiel, Erythræan Sibyl, Joel, Delphic
Sibyl, Isaiah, Cumæan Sibyl, Daniel, Libyan Sibyl; Jonah and Zachariah
are placed one at each end of the chapel, between the historical
compositions at the angles of the ceiling. These single figures are
the most striking features of the design, and calculated skilfully to
help the architectural effect. The side walls of the chapel, below the
springing of the vault, had already been decorated with frescoes executed
by Sandro Botticelli, Cosimo Rosselli, Ghirlandaio, Luca Signorelli, and
Perugino. Michelangelo’s frescoes were finished toward the end of the
year 1512. Vasari’s statement that he painted them all in twenty months
without any assistance is undoubtedly exaggerated; it possibly refers to
the completion of the first half of the ceiling.
For the next twenty years Michelangelo did little or nothing in painting;
but in 1533, at the age of fifty-nine, he began the cartoons for the
fresco of the “Last Judgment” on the wall behind the altar in the Sistine
Chapel. This celebrated composition is entirely of nude figures, no
accessories being introduced to add to the terror of the scene. Each
figure throughout this vast composition has its appropriate meaning,
and the power of design and mastery of execution are unsurpassed and
unsurpassable. The picture was finished in 1541. Two frescoes in the
neighboring Pauline Chapel, the “Conversion of Saint Paul,” and the
“Crucifixion of Saint Peter,” which were finished in 1549, were his last
paintings. He had accepted, in 1547, the position of architect of Saint
Peter’s, stipulating that his services should be gratuitous. He continued
to carry the building forward, altering materially the original design of
Bramante, until his death, which took place in February, 1564. His body
was taken to Florence, and buried in Santa Croce.
Although the genius of Michelangelo has exercised a vast and widely
diffused influence over all subsequent art, yet this master, unlike
Raphael, formed no school of his own immediate followers. It must be
admitted that Raphael owes him much, for he never found his full strength
until he had seen Michelangelo’s works at Rome, when his style underwent
immediate improvement. None of those who worked under Michelangelo dared
to walk directly in his steps; there is in his style, as there was in
the character of the man himself, a certain stern individuality which
gives the impression of solitary and unapproachable greatness. Of his
assistants, the most eminent was Sebastiano del Piombo.