Michelangelo

Michelangelo was an Italian artist who lived during the Renaissance, a time when art and learning blossomed in Europe. His full name was Michelangelo Buonarroti. He was born in 1475 and died in 1564, almost 89 years old. He worked as a sculptor, a painter, an architect, and a poet. Many people consider him one of the greatest artists in human history.

Michelangelo grew up near Florence, Italy. As a teenager, he studied art in the household of Lorenzo de' Medici, the powerful ruler of Florence. There he learned to carve marble and to study ancient Roman statues. He always said sculpture was his true love. He believed that every block of marble already had a figure hidden inside it, and his job was just to chip away the extra stone.

His most famous sculpture is the David, finished in 1504. It shows the young hero from the Bible standing before his fight with the giant Goliath. The statue is 17 feet tall, about three times the height of a real person. Michelangelo carved it from a single huge block of marble that other sculptors had given up on. Today the David still stands in Florence and draws millions of visitors a year.

In 1508, Pope Julius II asked Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo did not want the job. He thought of himself as a sculptor, not a painter. But the Pope insisted. For the next four years, Michelangelo lay on his back on tall wooden platforms, painting more than 5,000 square feet of ceiling. He covered it with scenes from the Bible. The most famous shows God reaching out to touch the finger of Adam, the first man. That single image has been copied and joked about more than almost any other painting in the world.

Michelangelo also designed buildings. Late in life, he became the chief architect of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The huge dome he designed still rises over the city today. It later inspired the dome of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Michelangelo and another Italian artist, Leonardo da Vinci, lived at the same time. They did not get along. Historians say the two men once worked on paintings in the same room in Florence and argued about whose art was better. Michelangelo could be sharp-tempered and proud, and he often felt unhappy with his own work.

He kept carving and painting almost until the day he died. His last sculptures, left unfinished, still show figures struggling to break free from the stone.