A true embodiment of the Italian High Renaissance, Michelangelo has been celebrated as the greatest practitioner of painting, sculpture and architecture to have ever lived. Becoming the first artist to have a biography published whilst alive, the painter Giorgio Vasari established in his text that Michelangelo’s work transcended all others, dead or alive, ‘in not one art alone but in all three’ disciplines. His most famous marble statues Pietà and David, and frescos of The Last Judgement and The Creation of Adam for the walls of the Sistine Chapel, are still considered landmarks of artistic achievement.
Born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni in the Republic of Florence in 1475, the artist’s early education — sketching classical statues in the city’s Medici gardens and dissecting cadavers from the local hospital — provided him with a groundwork for depicting brilliant anatomical precision and compelling emotion. This is evident in his unpublished drawing A nude man (after Masaccio) and two figures behind him, which sold at Christie’s Paris in 2022 for €23,162,000, setting a world auction record for the Renaissance master.
He spent most of his career in Rome, achieving unprecedented levels of success. His key patron was the Vatican, where he was regarded as a supreme exponent of disegno — the mastery of both draughtsmanship and design. At the age of 71, he was appointed lead architect for the renovations of St. Peter’s Basilica, conceiving its iconic dome.
Still sculpting six days before his death in 1564, at the age of 88, Michelangelo had come to be called Il Divino (The Divine One) by his peers, praised for the way his highly complex and monumental works inspired awe. Surviving documents, including the artist’s own poetry, provide fascinating insight into his personal life: his sexuality was ambiguous, his ego was huge and his temper was hot. This volatile nature led to frequent outbursts and several projects being abandoned midway. However, it’s also been credited with making Michelangelo a perfectionist, unable to compromise at any cost and willing to sacrifice everything, including relationships, happiness and health, in the pursuit of the sublime.