Michelangelo

The great Italian High Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti was born at Caprese, Florence. He sketched widely as a child, and was duly apprenticed him to Domenico Ghirlandaio, an established artist of the day, for a term of 3 years. But within a year, despite having already absorbed the elements of fresco technique and completed copies of the great Florentine Old Masters of the past, he moved to the workshop of Bertoldo di Giovanni, a sculptor working for the Medici family. Indeed, during the years 1490-1492, Michelangelo lived with the Medicis; during this time he learned from such artists as Leonardo, Giotto, and Poliziano. Moving in 1496, to Rome, Michelangelo carved the first of his major sculptures, the Bacchus and the St Peter's Pietà, which revealed his mastery of the human body and composition as revealed in this sculpture made his name. In 1501 he returned to Florence where he completed his masterpiece David, the Bruges Madonna and began the Twelve Apostles. He also painted the Doni Tondo.