1475 –1564

Michelangelo

BiographyMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer. He was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. He 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. At 74 he became the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. 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.

Early lifeMadonna of the stairs

Battle of the Centaurs

Early adulthoodArca di San Domenico

Child with St John the Baptist

RomeBacchus Pietà

RomeLaocoön and His Sons

Main works

The Statue of David, completed by Michelangelo in 1504, is one of the most famous works of the Renaissance.

Main works

Doni Tondo

Main worksManchester Madonna

Main worksSistine Chapel ceiling

Main worksThe Separation of Light and Darkness

Main worksThe Creation of the Sun, Moon and Earth

Main worksThe Separation of Land and Water

Main worksThe Creation of Adam

Main worksThe Creation of Eve

Main worksThe Temptation and Expulsion (Fall of man)

Main worksThe Sacrifice of Noah

Main worksThe Great Flood

Main worksThe Drunkenness of Noah

Main works

Michelangelo's rendering of the Delphic Sibyl

The End

Michelangelo's own tomb at Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence