MICHELANGELO
In 1492, Michelangelo was 17 when his beloved Master Lorenzo de’ Medici passed away leaving Michelangelo both distraught, and unemployed. At that time, the city of Florence was in turmoil as rival factions vied to fill the empty seat of supremacy left vacant by the death of Lorenzo.
Confused and grieving, Michelangelo left Florence and went to Rome where he found work as a sculptor and a painter.
In 1499, Michelangelo was hired by a French Cardinal to carve the Pietà: Mary cradling her dead son. He personally went to the quarry in the town of Carrara to supervise the cutting and transportation of the marble. Upon its completion, the Pietà was hailed as a masterpiece. But this was not enough for the temperamental artist. He needed to find a project that would not just make him famous in his lifetime; he wanted eternal fame!
Periodically, he would return to Florence to visit his father and to complete a variety of projects, one of which was the tomb for his beloved patron Lorenzo de’ Medici and his brother Giovanni de’ Medici. Today these tombs can be found in the Cappella Medici in the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence.
He accepted commissions for projects all over Tuscany and down into Rome. They were all nice, but still he searched for the one single project that would once and for all, separate himself from the hoards of hacks who dared to call themselves artists. And he found one. When he learned that the Church elders in Florence wanted a statue from the biblical story of “David and Goliath” to be sculpted for the top of the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore...!
And if that great sculpture weren’t enough, as surely it was, he later returned to Rome where he created what was to become one of the most reproduced paintings in all of history: the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Michelangelo died in Rome at the age of 88. He had previously made it clear that he wished to be entombed in the Florentine Church of Santa Croce, which is where you will find his tomb today.
Exerpt from Florence Travel book FLORENCE GEMS & GIANTS by Patty Civalleri.
1-Minute Michelangelo
