Michelangelo had a gigantic influence on the renaissance. He was a master at both painting and sculpting, he also was an architect, engineer, and poet. During his day he was unbeatable in his painting and sculpting skills. He had many artist study under him and help him with painting the Sistine Chapel in Vatican, but none were on par with him. At age 17, Michelangelo had begun to dissect corpses from the local church graveyard to gain a much deeper understanding of the human body. Michelangelo had to be extremely cautious when examining corpses seeing as the act was strictly banned by the church, making the act illegal. Nonetheless, Michelangelo still had an amazing understanding of the human body and its proportions were extremely critical to his success rate as a sculptor and artist. Michelangelo’s incredibly realistic sculptures showed finely chiseled veins, wrinkles, muscles, bones, and nerves. Such skill was and still is unsurpassed till this day in the 21st century. Michelangelo 's life like sculptures and paintings were massively influential to other renaissance artists, his artwork was copied and mocked by many artist, and eventually his art developed into an art movement called Mannerism. Mannerist painters exaggerated and elongated human body proportions. From 1520 - 1580 late renaissance, Mannerism was extremely popular until Baroque art came into fashion. Before Michelangelo’s art came into play, artist during the dark ages drew human bodies one dimensional,