Michelangelo - Biography

Michelangelo

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in a centre of political, literary, religious, and artistic evolution. Florence, to which he belonged, was a centre of thought, of culture, and of trade, and was passing from the ancient idea of the rights and liberties of the City to forms of modern tyranny and more centralized government. Here is the record of his birth, as written by his father, Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, in his private note-book: "I record that on this day, March 6, 1474, a male child was born to me. I gave him the name of Michelangelo, and he was born on a Monday morning, four or five hours before daybreak; and he was born while I was Podestà of Caprese; and he was born at Caprese; and the godfathers were those I have named below." Skipping the names, we note that the date is 1474, according to Florentine usage; according to Roman usage it is 1475.  Michelangelo's biography written by Condivi states that "the planets were propitious at this birth and showed how great was to be this little child, and of how great genius, because as Mercury and Venus entered with benign aspect into the House of Jupiter this promised—as in fact did follow—that such a birth was to be that of a noble and high capacity, fit to succeed universally in any undertaking, but particularly in those arts which please the senses, like painting, sculpture, and architecture."

When Michelangelo was born, his father then was Podestà, or governor, of this little place of Caprese. He was born in an ancient family of distinguished descent, going back in ancestry to the beginning of the 13th Century. The family held very strongly to this special distinction of origin, which in the Florence of that date marked a special class. Indeed, the Buonarroti family claimed origin from the Counts of Canossa, illustrious not only by their antiquity, but also by their connection with imperial blood. Beatrice, the sister of Henry II, the Emperor, married that Boniface of Canossa to whom was born the famous Countess Matilda, who held in Italy, among other places, what was once called the Patrimony of St. Peter.

Objections have been made to this high descent, but in 1520 Alexander, Count of Canossa, wrote to Michelangelo claiming this connection, and calling himself "your good relative." Michelangelo also attached great importance to this descent, and a certain personal pride and sense of obligation marked his character. This sense of high descent stood by him in his relations with the great, and separated him from the mass of artists and artisans, accustomed to greater subservience than he could allow himself.

At the termination of his term in office, the father returned to Florence and the lad was given to nurse to a woman of Settignano, where the family had a villa which still stands. Michelangelo’s foster mother was the daughter and wife of stone-cutters and Michelangelo reasonably attributed his predilection for sculpture to this first childish impression. He went to school in Florence, and is said to have learned no more than reading, writing, and Italian, because he complained later that he knew no Latin; but that may have been from his modesty or from his pride; we shall see him later writing in Latin and not ill.

His acquaintance with boys, apprentices to masters in painting and sculpture in this city of Art, developed in the boy a strong desire for such life. He met the usual opposition from his family, who took it hard, and even beat him on that account. They yielded, however, and we have the record which binds him as an apprentice in the painter Ghirlandaio’s workshop, on the First of April 1488, for three ensuing years. We have stories about his life there, one of them trying to explain how he became a sculptor: Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent, had adorned his garden with antique statues and had placed a pupil and follower of Donatello, the great sculptor, over these collections, virtually to instruct any young men who might wish to use them. Ghirlandaio was asked to select from his pupils the most promising. From among them Michelangelo was chosen and learned the practice of stone-cutting as a workman, acquiring as a boy that practical skill which he developed further and further through a long life so that the mark of his laborious effort became famous.

An anecdote is told that serves as a beginning of his relations with the Medici which were to influence all his life. He had used a piece of refuse marble to carve a grinning mask, upon which he was at work when Lorenzo passed by. The Magnificent was astonished at the quality of the work with regard to the age of the boy, so that joking with him as with a child he said: “Oh! thou hast made that faun an old one, and yet thou has left him all his teeth. Dost thou not know that with old people of such an age there is always wanting some?” So that as soon as the Magnificent had left, Michelangelo struck out a tooth from the upper jaw, showing as if it had dropped from the gum, and waited anxiously for the Magnificent on the following day. The latter having come and seeing the keenness and simplicity of the boy, made up his mind to favor such a talent and to take him into his service, and learning whose son he was, said: "Go tell thy father that I should like to have a talk with him."

With great disgust at Michelangelo’s artistic friends and with great objection to his son’s becoming a stone-cutter, the father dared not refuse the services of his son to the great ruler of Florence, but replied that not only Michelangelo, but all the family were at the pleasure of the Magnificent. Lorenzo insisted upon doing him some favor in exchange. The father modestly asked for a place in the Customs, saying in the old democratic way of Florence: "Lorenzo, I am fit for nothing but reading and writing, I have never practiced art nor trade, I have lived on property that has come from my ancestors, and it has been my care to preserve these estates and to increase them as I have been able to do by my industry." The Magnificent laid his hand upon his shoulder, saying with a smile: "Thou wilt always be poor. If thou desirest a place I can arrange it for thee until a better become vacant." It is worth making out this little detail as a record of the personal relations that were still the mark of earlier Florence, so that Michelangelo for three years, from his fifteenth to his eighteenth, lived under the roof and in the company of the greatest man in that part of the world, a man whose name remains representative of culture and patronage of art, associated with the other great name of Pericles in Athens.

The boy’s position was that of a guest. He had a room in the palace and was treated as one of the Sons of the house. With these sons he continued an acquaintance through the greater part of his life. One was to be the famous Pope Leo X., another Pope Clement VII.; for the great families of Italy struggled to put a hand upon the rudder of the boat of Peter. In this household were men of the noblest birth and highest rank, assembled around the daily board.

It was the custom for guests to take their places next to the master in the order of their arrival. Those who were present at the beginning of the meal sat, each according to his degree, next to the Magnificent, not moving afterward for any one who might appear; and so it happened that Michelangelo found himself frequently seated above Lorenzo’s children and other persons of great consequence with whom that house was constantly filled. All these great people paid him attention and encouraged him in the art which he had chosen. Chief of all was the Magnificent himself, "who often sent for him during the day in order to show him jewels, cornelians, medals, and badges of great variety."

The business of Michelangelo's life in the Medicean house was to make himself a great sculptor, and thus confer glory upon the illustrious City of Florence which the Medicean house presided. Most of what Michelangelo produced during that period belonged to himself. These beautiful years of study and encouragement were to remain the few years of peace in Michelangelo’s long life.

The small chance of having made a fake antique (a statue of Cupid), turned him to Rome. It is said that the Cardinal of St. Giorgio, who had bought the statue, invited Michelangelo to Rome, willing to discover the author of the supposed antique. We do not know for sure if this is true, what we know for sure is that, in 1497, for another Roman gentleman, Gallo, Michelangelo made the Bacchus, now at Bargello in Florence.

His new friend Gallo obtained for Michelangelo the order for what is called Pietà, the Virgin with the dead Christ on her lap, which was to be made for the French Cardinal of St. Denis. The work was completed in 1499.  Another Madonna, that of Bruges, must have been made about these days; it may have helped to fill the young workman’s time until he was recalled by his father in 1501 to Florence. He was still a minor, subject to his father’s rule. He returned to his home, apparently because he was needed and his help vas more accessible than at a distance.

Michelangelo-Self Portrait as Saint Bartholomew in The Last Judgment (detail)

He had already begun the support of his family, which was in reality the main occupation that he followed, treating himself harshly that he might give more to them, and meeting with the usual experiences of miscomprehension by his relatives, who could not understand why he did not make more money since he was paid so much. It must have been entirely from a desire to save money for his family that Michelangelo acquired almost sordid habits. He gave freely, but lived abstemiously.

On his return to Florence, between 1501-1504, he created the famous David.

In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly appointed Pope Julius II, and he was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. Michelangelo had to constantly stop work in order to accomplish an ever increasing number of other tasks, and the tomb, of which the central feature is the statue of Moses, was never finished the way Michelangelo desired. It is located in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.

A brief absence to Florence and Michelangelo was again called back to Rome. We know the date, because his father emancipated the son, March 13, 1508, which gave him full mastery over his property and his person. The Pope delayed the work on the tomb. He had the wish to have the Papal Chapel of Pope Sixtus, now known as the Sistine, painted as to its vault. The magnificent painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel took almost 4 years of work and was completed in 1512.

When Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1527, after the revolted citizens exiled the Medici, the now republican city was fortified in expectation of an attack sure to come. Michelangelo was made Commissary-General, and worked on the fortifications of the city in 1528 and 1529. Still, the city was captured by the Imperial army in 1530, Alessandro de' Medici reinstalled as the ruler, and Michelangelo went into hiding to escape certain death. Pope Clement, however, wrote to the new government, asking protection and courteous treatment for Michelangelo, who if found was to go on with his work, so that he again returned to the sculptures of the Medici Chapel in San Lorenzo, "driven," says Condivi, "by fear rather than love". "There is no doubt," says Condivi in the Michelangelo's biography, "that but for the Pope’s protection Michael would have been removed from this world." In 1534 he left Florence and never returned.  Again Michelangelo was to be forced to the making of one of his greatest works against his will, and against his violent desire to carry out the long-deferred contract for the tomb of Julius. He had come back to Rome to carry out at length this thwarted purpose. One month later, October, 1534, Alexander Farnese became Pope under the name of Paul III. One of the Pope’s first wishes was to have Michelangelo in his service. And against the artist’s prayer to allow him to carry out his engagements of honor, the Pope exclaimed: "I have entertained this wish for thirty years, and now that I am Pope, shall I not realize it?" And he saw that Michelangelo begins the work on the Last Judgement, the fresco on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, which was commissioned by Clement VII. shortly before his death. Again Michelangelo thought of flight from Rome as an escape and made his preparations; but remembering how impossible it had been to escape from the previous demands of former Popes, wherever he fled, he yielded to the honors conferred upon him, which made him chief architect, sculptor, and painter with a salary for life. He finished the work on the Last Judgement in 1541.

Called upon to take up architectural work, in 1546 Michelangelo was appointed architect of Saint Peter's Basilica  in the Vatican. He stood in the way of many others coveting the position or the profits. Michelangelo devoted himself through pure obedience to the task of completing Saint Peter's, refusing all compensation during the remainder of his life; offering his unpaid services in that way both to his master and to the service of religion. Little else occupied his last years. The work and its necessities were sufficient for the strongest life. We know this last portion of the great man’s career by the records of this tedious work, and what remains of his poems, which in their rude and unfinished form tell us how the fire never burnt out as long as any place remained to hold it. But he had retired within himself and the ideas of religion filled the demands of his desires. He had been disappointed in many things: his ideal of civic life had disappeared from the world; he had not accomplished most of the work his heart was bent on; he viewed with austerity his own excessive enjoyment of beauty; he had met few other lives that could equally move along with his own. Perhaps he was conscious of his enormous importance, but he was modest beyond all other men and devoid of what is called ambition. This was the moderate end for which he had created the marvels of art which belong to his name. He died on February 18, 1564.

His death marked for all Italy the close of the great period. There was a contest between Rome and Florence as to which city should keep Michelangelo's body. Florence, however, keeps him—and gave him a princely funeral—and the usual unpoetic tomb that serves for princes. Though both cities, and most men of the time, misstated and misapprehended many of the reasons for his greatness, they were not so far different from most of us. It has taken many centuries and many minds to build a sufficient intellectual appreciation of the man who perhaps was the greatest of all artists.