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Michelangelo: "Supreme Renaissance Artist"

© Jennifer Hollowell

For as long as I can remember, I have been dazzled by the realistic beauty of Michelangelo Buonarroti's artwork. This master of poetry, architecture, sculpture and painting was born March 6, 1475 near Florence, Italy. While seeking biographic information about this Italian artist, I found myself getting lost in the admiration of his work. His inspirations included Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, and Ghiberti. Though he was mostly self taught from merely walking the streets of Florence, he also studied under Domenico Ghirlandaio at age thirteen. While apprentice to Ghirlandaio, he learned fresco, which is the art of painting on freshly spread moist lime plaster with water based pigments.

By the time he was sixteen, he was studying sculpture with Lorenzo de Medici. Though naturally gifted, it was not until he got to Rome that his talents truly began to emerge. He was only twenty-four when he sculpted the Pieta in Rome! Florence learned of this brilliant creation and asked him to carve a statue for them. It was there that he carved David, his most famous sculpture. I am in complete awe whenever I view photographs of either of these works.

Pope Julius II commissioned him to carve statues for his church, but soon lost interest in the project. Instead, he asked him to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It took Michelangelo four years to complete this most wonderful painting in the history of art. It is now that he is recognized as one of the greatest painters in the world! Moses, another of his "most impressive works," took him four years to carve out of a block of marble, also. Though he spent years studying about this piece during its creation, it still demonstrates his own personality and philosophy. He always felt the human body was the most important subject to paint or sculpt. It is quite obvious this artist was a student of the bible because he used its stories and people for his painting and sculpture.

"I have always taken delight in conversing with leaned persons . . ." Michelangelo, like all great painters, used lines, colors, forms and spaces as a writer uses words and phrases to give structural beauty, design and meaning to his thoughts. He is also considered Renaissance Italy's greatest poets. He wrote primarily of love and his frustrations with inadequacies using traditional rhyming and meter.