Who was Michelangelo?
A: Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known simply as Michelangelo
was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High
Renaissance.
Born in the Republic of Florence, his work had a major
influence on the development of what?
A: Western art, particularly in relation to the Renaissance notions of
humanism and naturalism.
He is often considered a contender for the title of
what?
A: The archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder
contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci.
Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence,
sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the what?
A: The best-documented artists of the 16th century and several scholars have
described Michelangelo as the most accomplished artist of his era.
He sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and
David, before the age of what?
A: Thirty.
Despite holding a low opinion of painting, he also
created two of the most influential frescoes in what?
A: In the history of Western art.
What were they?
A: Scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and The
Last Judgment on its altar wall.
At the age of 71, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the
Younger as what?
A: The architect of St. Peter's Basilica.
He transformed the plan so that the western end was
finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after what?
A: After his death.
Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose
biography was published when?
A: While he was alive.
In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called what?
A: Il Divino ("the divine one").
His contemporaries often admired his terribilità—his
ability to instill what in viewers of his art?
A: A sense of awe.
Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate
Michelangelo's impassioned, highly personal style contributed to the rise of
what?
A: Mannerism, a short-lived style and period in Western art following the
High Renaissance.
When was Michelangelo born?
A: On 6 March 1475.
Where was he born?
A: In Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in
Valtiberina, near Arezzo, Tuscany.
For several generations, his family had been what?
A: Small-scale bankers in Florence; but the bank failed, and his father,
Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, briefly took a government post in
Caprese, where Michelangelo was born.
At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the
town's what?
A: Judicial administrator and podestà or local administrator of Chiusi della
Verna.
Who was Michelangelo's mother?
A: Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena.
Several months after Michelangelo's birth, the family
returned to Florence, where he was what?
A: Raised.
During his mother's later prolonged illness, and after
her death in 1481 (when he was six years old), Michelangelo lived with whom?
A: A nanny and her husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where
his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm.
There he gained his love for what?
A: Marble.
As a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to Florence to
study what?
A: Grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino.
However, he showed no interest in his schooling,
preferring to do what?
A: Copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters.
The city of Florence was at that time Italy's greatest
center of what?
A: The arts and learning.
The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had labored for fifty
years to create what?
A: The north and east bronze doors of the Baptistry.
How did Michelangelo describe the doors?
A: As "The Gates of Paradise".
During Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had
been called from Florence to the Vatican to do what?
A: To decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel.
Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco
painting, perspective, figure drawing and portraiture who had what?
A: The largest workshop in Florence.
In 1488, at what age was Michelangelo apprenticed to
Ghirlandaio.
A: 13.
The next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to do
what?
A: To pay Michelangelo as an artist, which was rare for someone of fourteen.
When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, de facto ruler of
Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent whom?
A: Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.