Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) was a sculptor, painter and architect widely considered to be one of the greatest artists of all time.Tomb of Pope Julius II

As a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. However, he showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters.

At 13, he persuaded his father to allow him to leave grammar school and become an apprentice to the artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most successful fresco painters in Florence.

Michelangelo spent only a year at the workshop the moved into the palace of Florentine ruler Lorenzo the Magnificent, of the powerful Medici family, to study classical sculpture in the Medici gardens.

At the age of 22, Michelangelo moved to Rome and sold his first important work: the Bacchus and another Cupid, now lost.

He was only 24 when he finished sculpting the Pieta for the French cardinal Jean de Billheres. Michelangelo went to the marble quarry and selected the marble for this exquisite piece himself.

At age of 27 Michelangelo returned to Florence, which had become a republic, and received an order from the local authorities to sculpt a colossal marble statue of David.

In 1508, when Michelangelo was 28, Pope Julius decided to decorate his uncle’s chapel (called the Sistine, after Pope Sixtus IV) and ordered Michelangelo to fill the ceiling with frescoes. He protested that he is no painter but the Pope insisted and Michelangelo began to work alone and in great discomfort. He finished the Sistine Chapel frescoes in 1512.