Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.
David is a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture, created from 1501 to 1504 by Michelangelo. With a height of 5.17 metres, the David was the first colossal marble statue made in the early modern period following classical antiquity, a precedent for the 16th century and beyond. David was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, but was instead placed in the public square in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. In 1873, the statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, and in 1910 replaced at the original location by a replica.
The Madonna della Pietà informally known as La Pietà is a marble sculpture of Jesus and Mary at Mount Golgotha representing the "Sixth Sorrow" of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Michelangelo Buonarroti, now in Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City. It is a key work of Italian Renaissance sculpture and often taken as the start of the High Renaissance.
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian Renaissance painter and architect, who is best known for his work The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of all art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, although he is now regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born.
The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted in fresco by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art.
The Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze is an instructional art academy in Florence, in Tuscany, in central Italy.
The Madonna of the Stairs is a relief sculpture by Michelangelo in the Casa Buonarroti, Florence. It was sculpted around 1490, when Michelangelo was about fifteen. 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.
The Medici Chapels are two structures at the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, and built as extensions to Brunelleschi's 15th-century church, with the purpose of celebrating the Medici family, patrons of the church and Grand Dukes of Tuscany. The Sagrestia Nuova was designed by Michelangelo. The larger Cappella dei Principi, although proposed in the 16th century, was not begun until the early 17th century, its design being a collaboration between the family and architects.
Pietro Torrigiano was an Italian Renaissance sculptor from Florence, who had to flee the city after breaking Michelangelo's nose. He then worked abroad, and died in prison in Spain. He was important in introducing Renaissance art to England, but his career was adversely affected by his violent temperament.
Bacchus (1496–1497) is a marble sculpture by the Italian High Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo. The statue is somewhat over life-size and represents Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in a reeling pose suggestive of drunkenness. Commissioned by Raffaele Riario, a high-ranking Cardinal and collector of antique sculpture, it was rejected by him and was bought instead by Jacopo Galli, Riario's banker and a friend to Michelangelo. Together with the Pietà, the Bacchus is one of only two surviving sculptures from the artist's first period in Rome.
Two different crucifixes, or strictly, wooden corpus figures for crucifixes, are attributed to the High Renaissance master Michelangelo, although neither is universally accepted as his. Both are relatively small figures which would have been produced in Michelangelo's youth.
Niccolò di Raffaello di Niccolò dei Pericoli, called "Il Tribolo" was an Italian Mannerist artist in the service of Cosimo I de' Medici in his natal city of Florence.
Ascanio Condivi was an Italian painter and writer. Generally regarded as a mediocre artist, he is primarily remembered as the biographer of Michelangelo.
Giuliano di Piero di Simone Bugiardini was an Italian Renaissance painter. He was born and was mainly active in Florence. He was a painter primarily of religious subjects but he also executed a number of portraits and a few works with mythological subjects.
Jacopo Torni (1476–1526), also known as Jacobo Fiorentin, L'Indaco, and Jacopo dell'Indaco, was an Italian (Florentine) painter, sculptor and architect.
The Battle of Cascina is a never-completed painting in fresco commissioned from Michelangelo for the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. He created only the preparatory drawing before being called to Rome by Pope Julius II, where he worked on the Pope's tomb; before completing this project, he returned to Florence for some months to complete the cartoon.
The Tomb of Pope Julius II is a sculptural and architectural ensemble by Michelangelo and his assistants, originally commissioned in 1505 but not completed until 1545 on a much reduced scale. Originally intended for St. Peter's Basilica, the structure was instead placed in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli on the Esquiline in Rome after the pope's death. This church was patronized by the Della Rovere family from which Julius came, and he had been titular cardinal there. Julius II, however, is buried next to his uncle Sixtus IV in St. Peter's Basilica, so the final structure does not actually function as a tomb.
The Young Slave is a marble sculpture of Michelangelo, datable to around 1525–1530 which is conserved in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. It is part of the "unfinished" series of Prigioni intended for the Tomb of Julius II.
The Genius of Victory is a 1532–1534 marble sculpture by Michelangelo, produced as part of a design for the tomb of Pope Julius II. It is 2.61 m high and is now in the Salone dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
Brutus is a marble bust of Brutus sculpted by Michelangelo around 1539–1540. It is now in the Bargello museum in Florence.
