Research Paper On Michelangelo Buonarrotio

Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raffaello Santio (or Sanzio), known as Raphael, were both famous Italian Renaissance artists and unspoken rivals. Their work is often compared, as a number of Raphael’s pieces clearly showed an influence from Michelangelo. Michelangelo started during the Golden Age and continued into the Late Renaissance (1520-1600). He studied under many talented artists and created artwork that outshined his predecessors, as well as left a legacy that is nearly impossible to measure up to. Raphael was also prevalent during the Golden Age of the Renaissance, and though he was influenced by many great artists of his time, he had his own individual style that influenced artists that succeeded him. Though the two artists had a rivalry,

He had four brothers, a father with an ungenerous personality, which lead to him not encouraging love from his sons, and a mother who died when he was a child. He was born into a family that had a moderate income, and an impressive ancestry that proved his relation to the Counts of Canossa. When Michelangelo was only thirteen, his father left him to the care of David and Domenico del Ghirlandaio so that they may teach him the art of painting, but this set up didn’t last very long because Michelangelo’s talent had already surpassed that of his masters, who were known as some of the finest artists in Florence at the time. This lead to envy from his former master. Domenico sent him to Bertoldo to the Magnificent Lorenzo, because he showed an inclination in sculpting, and with him he was able to create his first sculpture, Mask of a Faun, which is a lost sculpture that there are no photographs of. The sculpture pleased the Magnificent Lorenzo extremely, as he was amazed by the raw talent of the young sculptor. Michelangelo and the Magnificent Lorenzo dei Medici grew very close and he became, in Michelangelo’s own words, “in loco di patre” or “as a father” (Martellucci 6). When Lorenzo the Magnificent died in 1492, Michelangelo was overcome with sadness and depression. In June of 1496, Michelangelo was in Rome carving a Bacchus (Figure 1) for Jacopo Galli. This statue earned admiration from all, and led him to be

Michelangelo had such powerful emotions conveyed in his paintings that lead to his style becoming widely imitated. Most new painters in the Renaissance were skilled at using layout in their paintings, Michelangelo was not, as he was more talented at sculpting and knowledge of human anatomy, Eugène Müntz stated,

Although he applied painting techniques to sculpture, he remained a sculptor when he took up the brush; instead of using gestures, poses, perspective, and lighting to connect figures to each other, he merely highlighted each individually. (Muntz 112)

Michelangelo’s most famous painting is his work in the Sistine Chapel (Figure 5). His figures in this vast work of art show a wide amount of free movement and fluidity. The dislocation of the characters is what gives the piece so much movement. The true beauty of Michelangelo’s paintings is the amount of emotions he can portray in one piece. The talent he had for putting “a universe of sensations into a single subject” surpassed that of even the most talented artists of that time, such as his mentor Ghirlandaio.