Something you should know about Michelangelo
Michelangelo paintings are loved by many art-lovers, especially the creation of Adam is one of our popular oil painting reproductions. Why is Michelangelo so famous? Why is it that his name shines forth as one of the greatest Renaissance artists, while there are many who score over him in the terms of techniques and execution? Why is it that he is the de facto patron of sculptors and painters? There are three main reasons to justify Michelangelo’s claim to this unparallel fame and glory, versatility, volume, and perfection, a combination that was almost out of this world. The amount of work that he did, surpasses many a modern artists even in this age of mass production. Starting from initial sketches, moving to oils, and then graduating from frescoes to sculptures, even the most prolific of the artists would appear short of this genius. In addition, he left no stone of Renaissance Art unturned. Be in fine arts, architecture, or iconography, he was almost an omnipresent personality in the sixteenth century European “art space.” Among all of his artworks, there is none, which can be rated as less than “perfect.”
Michelangelo’s original name was Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, 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.[2] 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 Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.
A list of Michelangelo’s works would fill volumes, one thing though stands out in the character of this man, and that was his entirely apolitical nature and sheer disregard to the origin of his inspiration, as long as it was creative. He never questioned people who commissioned him work, nor did he shy away from taking over other artists’ unfinished works. St Peters Basilica is a case in point. Michelangelo was in fact more of a Greek artist than a Roman one. It is this “otherworldliness” of his, which makes him stand out among all other arguably “better” artists.
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