Michelangelo (1475-1564)
One of the most influential artists of all time?
Okay, the subheading is a bit of a troll, because it has caused no end of debate amongst artists for the last 500 years and will no doubt continue to do so indefinitely. It was a great argument even in his own day, with some siding with Leonardo da Vinci, some with Raphael, some with any number of the great artists of the Renaissance. The truth is, the Renaissance produced an amazing number of artists who continue to be influential, whereas any number of artists since then have only produced temporary fads.
Michelangelo was born in Florence 255 years after Dante's Divine Comedy, 201 years after Thomas Aquinas died leaving his Summa Theologica unfinished, 168 years after the Templar Knights were executed by French King Philip, 127 years after the black plague reached France and Britain, 78 years after the Medici Bank was founded in Florence, 60 years after John Hus proposed to reform the Church and was burned at the stake for heresy, 25 years after Gutenberg invented the printing press, 23 years after Leonardo da Vinci was born, 17 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, 23 years before Savonarola was convicted and executed for heresy in Florence, exactly 100 years before William Sumner (ancestor of Ron Sumner) was born in Bicester, Oxfordshire, England, and 155 years before William Sumner sailed to the Americas with the Winthrop Expedition of 1630, where they helped found Boston, MA.
(Okay, that last bit probably isn't the most important event related to Michelangelo's life, but it happens to be important to mine... =)
Michelangelo was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, a Florentine artist of some note, at age 13 and only a year later his father requested that Ghirlandaio pay Michelangelo for his work rather than be paid to teach him, which was quite unusual for the time. That same year (1489), Lorenzo de Medici enrolled Michelangelo in the Humanist Academy underwritten by the Medici, where he was allowed to grow academically as well as artistically. When Lorenzo died in 1492 (the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue), Michelangelo left the Academy for a time and later came back to the Medici court as a commisioned artist.
In 1496, Michelangelo (at 21) traveled to Rome for various commissions, and a year later was commissioned to sculpt his now famous Pietá which resides in the Vatican. Michelangelo went on to create four Pietás, and I have had the privilege of seeing them in Rome, Florence, and Milan. Michelangelo saw himself as a sculptor foremost, and is said to have declared that he only released the images that were within the marble, chipping away all that did not belong. His easel paintings on canvas are few, and his most famous painting is that of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, commissioned by Pope Julius II. It was begun in 1507 and finished in 1511, just 4 years before Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg door.
Much has been made of Michelangelo's Neoplatonic influences, and when Michelangelo was in Florence it was a hotbed of Neoplatonism. As a youth he must also have heard the fiery sermons of Savonarola. He is said to have contributed work to Savonarola's "Bonfire of the Vanities," which was an attempt on the part of Savonarola to purify the church in Florence. Michelangelo would later say it was the sermons of Savonarola he heard in his mind while he was painting the Sistine Ceiling, and some suggest that Santi Pagnini, a disciple of Savonarola, may have aided Michelangelo in the development of the Biblical themes, though this cannot be proven. A woodcut entitled, "Death Showing a man Heaven and Hell," found in Savonarola's pamphlet "The Art of Dying Well" is surprisingly similar to the composition of Michelangelo's Last Judgment. In addition, Michelangelo's insistence on his own uniqueness and vision may have been instilled by Savonarola, who insisted "Every painter portrays himself. ... However varied his works, each one is stamped by his thought" (Hyatt, The Met). More than myself have speculated that Michelangelo's faith in the blood of Christ and his grace as the basis of his salvation also came from the teachings of Savonarola.
