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Michelangelo Inspiration

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Michelangelo was a Renaissance, humanist, sculpture, engineer, and painter. He was called a melancholy genius and his work reflects many life long spiritual and artistic struggles. He was a huge influence on Renaissance painters and later artists to come. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on March 6, 1475 in Caprese, Italy. His parents were wealthy bankers in Florence. After his birth, his mother Francesca Neri, became very ill. His father was out of town so he spent the early years of his life living with a family of stonecutters. His mother recovered about a year later. As a child,he would skip school to watch the painters at nearby churches. He would try to recreate what the painters were doing on scratch paper. After …show more content…

While at Rome, he created some of his most famous works like the “Pieta” and the “David”. After living in Rome for several years, he was hired to paint several murals in the Sistine Chapel. He was very humbled to be selected to paint in the Sistine Chapel. His original idea for the ceiling of the Chapel was to have the 12 apostles morphed into around 300 figures. He had several assistants to help him paint. When the project was almost completed, a fungus infected the plaster and the entire 65 mural had to be recreated. Michelangelo then fired all of his assistants and did the entire thing by himself. He would not let anyone around the mural while he was painting. This is where he painted the famous “Creation of Adam” on the ceiling of the Chapel. It took him 4 years to finish all of these murals and it left him partially crippled. After the Sistine Chapel, he decided that he would never paint again so he started sculpting . He was then commissioned to work on a tomb for Pope Julius II. This tomb took him several decades to complete. After completing the tomb, Michelangelo did miscellaneous work for nearby churches until he died on February 18th, 1564. He lived to be 88 which was a very long life for that era. Michelangelo himself was influenced by ancient Greek and Roman art. Michelangelo's art influenced many people in his time, and in modern times. He was a huge influence on the humanist and the renaissance

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