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Michelangelo
di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (March 6, 1475 –
February 18, 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo,
was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect,
poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond
the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took
up 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 and fellow Italian Leonardo
da Vinci.
Michelangelo's output in every field during his long
life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence,
sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken
into account, he is the best-documented artist of
the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the
Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned
thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo
also created two of the most influential works in
fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from
Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the
altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect,
Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the
Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da
Sangallo the Younger as the architect of Saint Peter's
Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western
end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome
being completed after his death with some modification.
In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing,
he was the first Western artist whose biography was
published while he was alive. Two biographies were
published of him during his lifetime; one of them,
by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle
of all artistic achievement since the beginning of
the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have
currency in art history for centuries. In his lifetime
he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine
one"). One of the qualities most admired by his
contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense
of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts
of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned
and highly personal style that resulted in the next
major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance,
Mannerism.
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