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MICHELANGELO the designer and chief architect os Sistine Chepal of Vatican City is considered as one of the greatest sculpters. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (um very long and difficult to pronounce) was born at Caprese village in Florentine territory. His father Ludovico Buonarroti Simoni was a resident megistrate.
MICHELANGELO has joined as an apprentice in Domenico Ghirladaio where he learned the techniques of fresco painting. At the same time he also made copies of the old masters paintings which are now in Louvre museum, Paris. He also started his sculptering at the same time in Medici Garden. He produced at least 2 relief sculpters by the time he was 16 years old. He achived his own style in sculptering at an very early age.
He left to Bologna and then to Rome in 1496.

In Rome he carved the first of his major works, the Bacchus (Florence, Bargello) and the St Peter’s Piet�, which was completed by the turn of the century. It is highly finished and shows that he had already mastered anatomy and the disposition of drapery, but above all it shows that he had solved the problem of the representation of a full-grown man stretched out nearly horizontally on the lap of a woman, the whole being contained in a pyramidal shape. (See Figure). Thsi Pieta has made him very famous by the time he returned to Florence in 1501. It was during this period he started carving gigantic David. Many other major works were done during this period

After the completion of the David in 1504 he began to work on the cartoon of a huge fresco in the Council Hall of the new Florentine Republic, as a pendant to the one already commissioned from Leonardo da Vinci Both remained unfinished and the grandiose project of employing the two greatest living artists on the decoration of the Town Hall of their native city came to nothing.

In 1508, back in Rome, he began his most important work, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican for Julius, who, as usual, was impatient to see it finished. Dissatisfied with the normal working methods and with the abilities of the assistants he had engaged, Michelangelo determined to execute the whole of this vast work virtually alone. Working under appalling difficulties (amusingly described in one of his own poems), most of the time leaning backwards and never able to get far enough away from the ceiling to be able to see what he was doing, he completed the first half (the part nearer to the door) in 1510. The whole enormous undertaking was completed in 1512, Michelangelo being by then so practised that he was able to execute the second half more rapidly and freely. It was at once recognized as a supreme work of art, even at the moment when Raphael was also at work in the Vatican Stanze. From then on Michelangelo was universally regarded as the greatest living artist, although he was then only 37 and this was in the lifetimes of Leonardo and Raphael (who was even younger).

Since 1546 he had been increasingly active as an architect; in particular, he was Chief Architect to St Peter’s and was doing more there than had been done for thirty years. This was the greatest architectural undertaking in Christendom, and Michelangelo did it, as he did all his late works, solely for the glory of God.

Michelangelo died at an age of 89 on 18th February 1564 leaving us a great treasure of art and sculpters. He grand design of St. Peters Church is the ultimate proof of his greatness. He will be remembered for all his great achievements.

One of the monumental biographical noval i read about Michelangelo is “Agony and Ecstacy” by Irvin Stone. Try to read it if u can lay hands on it

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