Michelangelo

(1475 - 1564)

Born in Florence in 1475, Michelangelo at the age of thirteen became apprentice to the city’s leading painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio, through whom he met his future patron Lorenzo de’ Medici. Michelangelo rose to prominence as a sculptor with his Pietà of 1498 and his David of 1504; he was the first living artist to have a biography written about him, by Giorgio Vasari. Over a nearly eighty-year career, Michelangelo was celebrated as the greatest of living artists, a reputation only slightly diminished by the passing of centuries. Giorgio Vasari called him “a spirit endowed with universality of power in each art, and in every profession, one capable of showing by himself alone what is the perfection of art.”