Michelangelo Buonarroti

Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, near Arezzo, where his father Ludovico briefly held an administrative post. The family had worked as small-scale bankers in Florence for generations, but the bank had failed. Shortly after his birth the family returned to Florence, where he grew up.

After his mother's death in 1481 he lived with his nurse and her husband, a stonecutter, in Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry. In 1488 he became a pupil of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. A year later he entered the circle of Lorenzo de' Medici, where he sculpted and mixed with humanist scholars.

In 1498–1499 he sculpted the Pietà in Rome and in 1501–1504 the marble David in Florence, made from a large block that other sculptors had begun earlier. In 1505 Pope Julius II summoned him to Rome for his tomb. That project was repeatedly reduced in scale and was completed only in 1545, in a much smaller form.

Although he did not regard himself as a painter, in 1508–1512 he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with scenes from the Book of Genesis. Between 1536 and 1541 he followed this with the Last Judgment on the altar wall. For the Medici family he worked in Florence on a funerary chapel and the Laurentian Library.

From 1546 he directed the building of St Peter's as architect, returning to a centralised plan and designing the dome. He also designed the Capitoline Hill in Rome. In addition he wrote more than three hundred sonnets and madrigals, including poems for Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and cultivated a friendship with the poet Vittoria Colonna.

Michelangelo lived in Renaissance Italy, where art was commissioned by city governments, guilds, banking families such as the Medici, and popes. Around 1490 Florence was a centre of humanist learning and of interest in classical antiquity, on which his work built. Patrons often determined subject, cost and schedule, which could lead to prolonged disputes.

His life fell in turbulent times: the French invasion of 1494, the fall of the Medici and the rise of Savonarola in Florence, the Italian Wars, the Reformation from 1517 and the Sack of Rome in 1527. In 1528–1529 he worked on the fortifications of besieged Florence. After the Council of Trent (1545–1563), oversight of religious imagery was tightened.

Michelangelo was famous at an early age: he made the Pietà and the David before turning thirty. In 1550 Giorgio Vasari presented his work as the culmination of the revival of the arts since antiquity, a view that remained influential for a long time. His patrons included Pope Julius II, the Medici and later Pope Paul III.

His emphasis on the powerful, muscular human figure was widely imitated and contributed to Mannerism. The Last Judgment drew criticism during his lifetime because of the nudity of many figures. His designs for the Laurentian Library and for St Peter's influenced later architects.

Michelangelo died in Rome on 18 February 1564, aged 88. His body was taken to Florence and buried in Santa Croce, as he had wished. The dome of St Peter's was completed after his death with modifications. Following decisions linked to the Council of Trent, his pupil Daniele da Volterra was commissioned to cover nude parts of the Last Judgment.

Biographies by Vasari (1550) and Condivi (1553, the latter written with his cooperation) appeared in his lifetime. An edition of his poems from 1623 altered pronouns; later editions restored the text. Scholars disagree about how to interpret his love poetry addressed to men: some read it as an expression of personal feeling, others within the conventions of Renaissance culture.