Michelangelo

I’ve sampled many artists, but Michelangelo is my favourite, the Creation of Adam, a scene from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling and a feature on our homepage, is not only breath-taking but it demonstrates his understanding of man and the infinite power made up of both mind and the Father. I prefer Leonardo as an all-round teacher, but, in my heart, I’m a sucker for the sculptor and looking at the Pieta is a wholly religious experience for me. In fact, it was my love of sculptor that has made Prague my natural home. I am surrounded by the Greek Gods at every turn and they give me power. Just to look at them is to renew my faith, re-energize my belief, and I find myself on the plain of pure being once again. There is something about the half millennium and millennium periods that are just magical. The 1500s saw the High Renaissance. A period of the most exceptional artistic production in the Italian states, the best-known exponents of painting, sculpture and architecture of the High Renaissance also include Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Bramante and, for the trivia, it’s widely accepted the High Renaissance ended in 1520 with the death of Raphael, though others argue it ended with the Sack of Rome by the army of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor.

​

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni or more commonly known by his first name Michelangelo (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564) was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Considered by many the greatest artist of his lifetime, and by some the greatest artist of all time, his artistic versatility was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival, the fellow Florentine and client of the Medici, Leonardo da Vinci.

​

A number of Michelangelo's works of painting, sculpture and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in these fields was prodigious; given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches and reminiscences, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. He sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty. Despite holding a low opinion of painting, he also created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and The Last Judgment on its altar wall. His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. At the age of 74, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. He transformed the plan so that the western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death.

​

Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. In fact, two biographies were published during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was "supreme in not one art alone but in all three".

​

In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino ("the divine one"). His contemporaries often admired his terribilità—his ability to instil a sense of awe. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned, highly personal style resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.