Renaissance Sculptor and Painter, Creator of the Sistine Ceiling
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, and architect whose sculptures David and the Pietà, and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican — painted lying on his back, alone, over four years — are pinnacles of Western art history. He and Leonardo were the two most dazzling artists of the High Renaissance, but the two differed greatly in character and artistic ideas, and the historical record is full of anecdotes of their mutual disdain and verbal sparring — a "why must there be two of us" rivalry that reflects the intense vitality and competition of the Renaissance art world.
Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling; Michelangelo at first demurred that he was a sculptor and not a painter, but to no avail, and then spent four years all but alone, building scaffolding and painting on his back or bent at a height, at last completing a grand fresco cycle including the Creation, which astonished all Rome on its unveiling.
The marble Michelangelo carved his David from had already been worked by other sculptors and cast aside for years for its flaws, deemed unusable "waste." Michelangelo took it up and, over three years, carved from this "flawed" stone the near-perfectly proportioned David — a story often cited for the possibility of "creating a masterpiece from rejected material."
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
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