Michelangelo Buonarroti was an Italian High Renaissance artist and architect who is most famous for his marble sculptures, fresco paintings, and sonnets. He was born the second of five sons in Caprese, Italy on March 6, 1475. Although it is believed his father opposed it, as he belonged to the minor nobility in Florence, Michaelangelo became Domenico Ghirlandaio’s apprentice at thirteen (Florence’s most prominent painter) despite it being somewhat of a social downgrade. Having “nothing more to learn”, Lorenzo de Medici, the ruler of the city, became Michelangelo's patron and surrounded him with his ancient Roman statuary art collection and prominent poets, scholars, and humanists. In 1501 he was commissioned to sculpt David for the Florence cathedral. Using a forty-year-old reused block and modeling it in the classical Roman model, Michelangelo perfectly presented the idealized human form of the Renaissance. Working alongside Leonardo da Vinci, he painted a fresco for the Sala del Gran Consiglio for the Florence city hall. Besides his paintings and sculpture, he received permission from the Catholic Church to study cadavers for anatomy and dedicated his more than 300 poets and sonnets to a widow named Vittoria Colonna (although Michaelangelo never got married himself). He was the most documented artist of the time and was the first Western artist to have a biography (three in fact) of him published while he was still alive. Among his most famous works are David, Pieta, Moses, Madonna, Child with the Infant St. John, and Crucifixion of St. Peter. The fresco paintings in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican which he painted between 1508 and 1512, included scenes from the Old Testament featuring “complex, twisting poses and its exuberant use of colour, is the chief source of the Mannerist style.” He remained the head architect of St. Peters cathedral until his death in 1564. (304)

“Michelangelo.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michelangelo. 

The National Gallery, London. “Michelangelo.” Michelangelo (1475 - 1564) | National Gallery, London, https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/michelangelo. 

“Michelangelo.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 4 Mar. 2020, https://www.biography.com/artist/michelangelo.