The High Renaissance Art of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Background
Michelangelo was born March 6, 1475 in the town of Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany in Italy. The Buonarroti’s claimed they were descendants of Countess Mathilda of Canossa, one of the few medieval women to be remembered for military accomplishments, and while Michelangelo himself believed in this lineage, the claim itself remains unproven.
Though the Buonarroti’s were originally a banking family from Florence, by the time of his birth the bank had failed causing Michelangelo’s father to seek employment in government around the time of his birth. This was not to last, however, for by the time he was only a few months old the whole family would return to Florence. Sadly his childhood was full of mixed blessings. In his early years his mother would suffer from a long sickness, that would eventually see her dead in 1481 when Michelangelo himself was only six years old. However, this would lead to his living with a nanny and her husband by a nearby marble quarry that his father owned. It would be this early exposure to this stone that would instill in him a lifelong love of carving.
By the age of eleven, Michelangelo was enrolled in Florence studying grammar, but he had little interest in this schooling. Instead, he spent much of his time copying paintings from…
