Michelangelo, marble, the Sistine ceiling and a very long working life
Sculptor first, painter by obligation, architect in old age: Michelangelo worked for more than seventy years and left works in Florence and Rome that millions still queue to see.
Michelangelo Buonarroti1475 to 1564 · CapreseHigh Renaissance
Michelangelo Buonarroti thought of himself first as a sculptor. He was also the painter of the Sistine Chapel, the architect of the dome of St Peter’s and a poet of real power. Few artists have worked so long, almost until his death at 88. Few have left so much that is still in the places it was made for.
A stonecutter’s apprentice in Medici Florence
Michelangelo was born in 1475 in Caprese, a small town in Tuscany, and grew up in Florence. As a baby he was placed with a wet nurse from a family of stonecutters in Settignano, close to the city’s quarries. In 1488 he was apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, but he soon moved to the sculpture garden of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the city’s leading citizen, and lived in the Medici household among poets, philosophers and ancient sculpture.
His breakthrough came in Rome. The in St Peter’s Basilica, carved in 1498 and 1499 when he was in his early twenties, shows the Virgin holding the dead Christ across her lap with a tenderness that astonished his contemporaries. It is the only work he ever signed, on the sash across Mary’s chest. Since an attack in 1972 it has been protected behind glass.
David and the Sistine ceiling
Back in Florence, he took on a huge block of marble that other sculptors had started and abandoned decades before. Between 1501 and 1504 he turned it into David, about 5.17 metres (17 feet) tall, shown before the fight, tense and alert rather than triumphant. It stood outside the Palazzo Vecchio until 1873, when it was moved indoors to the Galleria dell’Accademia. A copy has stood in the original place since 1910.
In 1508 Pope Julius II called him to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, a commission he accepted reluctantly. He painted in true , applying pigment to fresh, wet plaster one section at a time. On the vault he set nine scenes from Genesis, surrounded by prophets, and hundreds of other figures, and he finished in 1512. More than twenty years later he returned to paint The Last Judgment on the altar wall, completed in 1541.
A long cleaning campaign in the 1980s and 1990s removed centuries of soot and revealed colours far brighter than many people had expected.
Carving from the block
Michelangelo did not simply copy a full-size clay model into stone, as many later sculptors did. He drew, made small models, and then worked the block directly with point and claw chisels, cutting in from the front as if releasing a figure from inside the stone.
He cared intensely about his material. He spent long periods in the quarries of Carrara in the Apuan Alps, choosing blocks himself, because a hidden crack could ruin months of work. Carrara’s white marble is still quarried today, and the scarred white mountains are worth seeing if you travel along the Tuscan coast.
Many of his sculptures were left unfinished, a quality known by the Italian term . The so-called Prisoners or Slaves, made for the tomb of Pope Julius II, are the clearest example. Four in the Accademia in Florence seem to struggle out of rough stone, while two more finished figures are in the Louvre in Paris. Whether he left such works unfinished by choice or by circumstance is still debated.
Few have left so much that is still in the places it was made for.
Architect and poet in old age
In Florence he had already designed the Medici Chapel and the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo. In 1546, at the age of seventy-one, he became chief architect of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He reshaped the plan and designed the great dome, which was completed after his death by Giacomo della Porta in 1590, with a taller profile than Michelangelo had drawn.
He also wrote poetry, especially in his later years: sonnets and madrigals about love, faith, age and the labour of art. More than two hundred poems survive. He kept carving to the end. The Rondanini Pietà, now in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, was still unfinished when he died in Rome in 1564.
- 1475Born in Caprese, Tuscany.
- 1488Apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence.
- 1498Begins the Pietà for a French cardinal in Rome.
- 1501Starts carving David in Florence.
- 1508Begins the Sistine Chapel ceiling, finished in 1512.
- 1536Begins The Last Judgment, finished in 1541.
- 1546Becomes chief architect of St Peter’s Basilica.
- 1564Dies in Rome, aged 88.
Seeing Michelangelo today
The Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence and the Vatican Museums in Rome are among the busiest museums in Italy, and queues can be long in every season. Booking a timed entry in advance is strongly advised. Check each museum’s own website for current arrangements.
In the Sistine Chapel, photography is not allowed and guards ask for quiet. Give your eyes time to adjust, find the Creation of Adam near the middle of the ceiling, then follow the Genesis scenes along the vault towards the altar wall and The Last Judgment.
Terms in this article
- Non finito
- Italian for “unfinished”: sculptures left partly in rough stone, deliberately or not, a feature of many works by Michelangelo.
- Pietà
- Italian for “pity”: an image of the Virgin Mary mourning the dead Christ, usually holding him in her lap.
- Fresco
- Wall painting in which pigment is applied to fresh, wet lime plaster, so the colour binds with the wall as it dries.
- Claw chisel
- A chisel with a toothed edge, used after the point to remove stone in even layers before finer finishing.
- Sibyls
- Female prophets of the ancient world, painted by Michelangelo alongside Old Testament prophets on the Sistine ceiling.
Readers ask
Did Michelangelo paint the Sistine ceiling lying on his back?
Probably not, despite the popular image. He worked from a high wooden scaffold built across the chapel, standing and leaning backwards to reach the vault, which was exhausting in its own way. The painting took about four years, from 1508 to 1512, and was done in true fresco, one section of fresh plaster at a time.
Is the David in Piazza della Signoria the original?
No. The statue in the piazza outside the Palazzo Vecchio is a copy, placed there in 1910. The original was moved indoors to the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence in 1873 to protect it from weather and damage. If you want to see Michelangelo’s own marble, you need a ticket for the Accademia, ideally booked ahead.
