Michelangelo di Loduvico Buonarroti Simioni is the second of five sons. He was a painter, architect, poet, and sculptor. He was on born on March 6, 1475 in Caprese, Italy. He died on February 18, 1564 (88 years old) in Rome, Italy. His father, Leonardo di Buonarrota Simoini worked for the Florentine government. Due to his mother’s illness, Michelangelo was placed with a family of stone cutters known as the Medici Family. His mother, Francesca Neri died when he was 6 years old. Shortly after his birth, he and his family returned to Florence, the city Michelangelo would always consider his home. Florence during the renaissance period was a brilliant arts center.
He is widely known as the most famous artist of the Italian Renaissance.…show more content… If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.
Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculpture to discover it.
Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
Genius is eternal patience.
The greater danger for most of us lies not setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
The true work of art is but is a shadow of the divine perfection.
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
It is necessary to keep one’s compass in one’s eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judge.”
Michelangelo was also a poet. In the poem below, Michelangelo gives us a sense of the co-existence in his art of a love of both the human body and God.
“Sculpture, the first of arts, delights a taste
Still strong and sound: each act, each limb, each bone
Are given life and, lo, man’s body is raised,
Breathing alive, in wax or clay or stone.
But oh, if time’s inclement rage should waste,
Or main, the statue that man builds
