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Period: Mar 6, 1475 to Apr 22, 1488
Early life
Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany (known today as Caprese Michelangelo). For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence, but the bank failed, and his father, Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, briefly took a government post in Caprese, where Michelangelo was born. -
Period: Apr 21, 1488 to Apr 22, 1492
Apprenticeships
As a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. The young artist, however, showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of painters. -
Apr 21, 1490
Florentine Pietà
The structure is pyramidal, and the vertex coincides with Mary's head. The statue widens progressively down the drapery of Mary's dress, to the base, the rock of Golgotha. The figures are quite out of proportion, owing to the difficulty of depicting a fully-grown man cradled full-length in a woman's lap. Much of Mary's body is concealed by her monumental drapery, and the relationship of the figures appears quite natural. -
Period: Apr 8, 1492 to Apr 22, 1499
Bologna, Florence and Rome.
Lorenzo de' Medici's death on 8 April 1492 brought a reversal of Michelangelo's circumstances.Michelangelo left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he carved a polychrome wooden Crucifix (1493), as a gift to the prior of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, which had allowed him to do some anatomical studies of the corpses from the church's hospital. -
Apr 21, 1492
Madonna of the Stairs
He was about 17 years old when finished. This and the Battle of the Centaurs were Michelangelo's first two sculptures. The first reference to the Madonna of the Stairs as a work by Michelangelo was in the 1568 edition of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. -
Period: Apr 21, 1499 to Apr 22, 1505
Florence
Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499. The republic was changing after the fall of its leader, anti-Renaissance priest Girolamo Savonarola, who was executed in 1498, and the rise of the gonfaloniere Piero Soderini. Michelangelo was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral. -
Apr 21, 1504
The Statue of David
Completed by Michelangelo in 1504. The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favored subject in the art of Florence. It is a 5.17-metre (17.0 ft). Originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, the statue was placed instead in a public square, outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. -
Period: Apr 21, 1505 to Apr 22, 1512
Sistine Chapel ceiling.
In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II and commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years.During the same period, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508–1512). Michelangelo's commission for the pope's tomb and convinced the pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order that he might fail at the task. -
Jun 1, 1508
Italian Realignment
Series of shifting alliances which ended up leading to several battles across Italy. These battles reshaped the map of Italy at the start of the 16th century. This ends up leading to a victory for Spain and the renouncing of power of France from Milan and Naples. -
Apr 21, 1512
Sistine Chapel.
the work took approximately four years to complete (1508–12). -
Period: Apr 21, 1513 to Apr 22, 1534
Florence under Medici popes
In 1513, Pope Julius II died and was succeeded by Pope Leo X, the second son of Lorenzo dei Medici. Pope Leo commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the façade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. -
Apr 21, 1515
Moses
is a sculpture by the Italian High Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, housed in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. Commissioned in 1505 by Pope Julius II for his tomb, it depicts the biblical figure Moses with horns on his head, based on a description in chapter 34 of Exodus in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible used at that time. Originally commissioned in 1505 and later finished in 1545. Julius II died in 1513. -
Feb 1, 1521
Italian war of 1521-1526
This war also known as the four years war was the high point of the Italian realignment. The war involved the Republic of Venice and Francis I of France against the holy roman emperor Charles V, Henry VIII of England, and the Papal states. This war started over the election of Charles as emperor and the pope wanting to ally against Martin Luther a man who strongly disputed the catholic view. -
Period: Apr 21, 1534 to Apr 22, 1546
Rome
Shortly before his death in 1534 Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of The Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. His successor, Paul III, was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project, which he laboured on from 1534 to October 1541. Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. -
Apr 21, 1541
The Last Judgment
By the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo covering the whole altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It is a depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgment by God of all humanity. -
Period: Apr 21, 1546 to Apr 22, 1564
St Peter's Basilica
While still working on the Last Judgement, Michelangelo received yet another commission for the Vatican. This was for the painting of two large frescos in the Cappella Paolina depicting significant events in the lives of the two most important saints of Rome, the Conversion of Saint Paul and the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Like the Last Judgement, these two works are complex compositions containing a great number of figures. They were completed in 1550. -
Feb 18, 1564
Death
Michelangelo died in Rome in 1564, at the age of 88. His body was taken from Rome for interment at the Basilica of Santa Croce, to be buried in Florence. -
St. Peter's Basilica
Designed principally by Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, St. Peter's is the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture[2] and one of the largest churches in the world. Catholic tradition holds that the Basilica is the burial site of Saint Peter, one of Christ's Apostles and also the first Pope.
