Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was apprenticed to the Medici workshop at thirteen and was already considered the greatest sculptor in Italy by his late twenties. Across the next sixty-five years he produced the Pietà (1499) — completed at twenty-four, his only signed work; the David (1504), carved from a 17-foot marble block other sculptors had abandoned; the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508–12) and the Last Judgement on its altar wall (1536–41); the Medici Chapel sculptures; and as architect, the design of the dome of St Peter's Basilica that he finished aged 88. He wrote three hundred surviving poems. He worked for nine popes, despised most of them, and outlived almost everyone who knew him in his youth. He died in Rome at 88, three weeks before his 89th birthday, with chisel still in hand on his last Pietà.
All Figures
Sculptor · Painter · Architect · Poet
Michelangelo Buonarroti
1,475 CE – 1,564 CE
The Florentine sculptor who carved the David from a discarded marble block and painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling lying on his back across four years.
Lifetime
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