Capella medicea michelangelo biography wikipedia

Michelangelo 6 March — 18 February had a complicated relationship with the Medici family , who were for most of his lifetime the effective rulers of his home city of Florence. The Medici rose to prominence as Florence's preeminent bankers. They amassed a sizable fortune some of which was used for patronage of the arts. Michelangelo's first contact with the Medici family began early as a talented teenage apprentice of the Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Despite pauses and turbulence in the relationship between Michelangelo and his Medici patrons, it was commissions from the Medici Popes that produced some of Michelangelo's finest work, including the completion of the tomb of Pope Julius II with its monumental sculpture of Moses , and The Last Judgement , a complex fresco covering the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel the earlier Sistine Chapel ceiling was not a Medici commission.

How did michelangelo die

Michelangelo's father sent him to study grammar with the Renaissance humanist Francesco da Urbino in Florence as a young boy. Lorenzo even offered Michelangelo's father Lodovico a respectable position in the palace. Michelangelo was thrown into the midst of the Medici circle, where he was involved with poetry, science, philosophy, and art.

It was then that Michelangelo first began writing down his deepest thoughts in poetry, which he continued to do for the rest of his life. He absorbed Renaissance Neoplatonism through his direct contact with some of the great Renaissance humanist philosophers of the Medici Court. At this time Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs Madonna of the Steps — and Battle of the Centaurs — The latter was based on a subject suggested by Poliziano and was commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici.