Michelangelo Buonarroti was born March 6, 1475 in the small village of Caprese, Italy. A gifted artist and poet, he helped set the pace of the Renaissance. Michelangelo's father, Ludovico Buonarroti had connection to the Medici family. He studies at the gardens when he was 15 years old and was invited into the household of Lorenzo de' Medici, the magnificent. Michelangelo's future was shaped to a large degree by his life in Lorenzo's household. When Lorenzo died in 1942 at the age of 43, Michelangelo designed the tombs for Lorenzo as well as his brother, Guiliano de Medici. The two complex tombs were conceived as representing opposite types. Lorenzo is the contemplative, introspective personality, while Guiliano is the active, extroverted one. He put magnificent nude representations of dawn and dusk on Lorenzo's tomb and representati

ons of day and night on Guiliano's tomb. Work on the Medici tombs continued long after Michelangelo went back to Rome in 1534. In 1505 Pope Julius II called Michelangelo back to Rome, for two commissions. The most important one was for the frescoes of the Sistine chapel ceiling. Working lying on his back on scaffolding, Michelangelo painted between 1508 and 1512 some of the finest pictorial images of all time. On the vault of the papal chapel, he devised an intricate system of decoration that included nine scenes from the Book of Genesis. Beginning with God Separating Light from Darkness and including the creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve, and the Flood. In order for him to prepare for this enormous work Michelangelo drew numerous figure studies and cartoons, devising scores of figure types and poses. These images, demonstrating Michelangelo's masterly understanding of human anatomy and movement, changed the course of painting in the west. Before the assignment of the Sistine ceiling in 1505, Michelangelo had been commissioned by Julius II to create his tomb. Michelangelo enthusiastically went ahead with the challenging project of more than forty figures, spending months in the quarries to obtain the necessary Carrara marble. Due to a mo

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