One of the guardians of the Devil, Michelangelo

Michelangelo (1475-1564), whose full names are Michelangelo, Di, Lodovico, and Bonarotti Simone, is also translated as "Michelangelo", "Michael Angelo", "Michael Angelo", "Michelangelo".

Michelangelo was an outstanding sculptor, architect, painter and poet of the Renaissance, known as the "Three Masters of the Renaissance" along with Leonardo Vinci and Raphael.

His sculpture "Statue of David" is world-famous, and the four statues of "Day", "Night", "Morning" and "Dusk" in front of the Medici Tomb are novel in concept, in addition to the famous sculptures such as "Statue of Moses" and "The Great Slave".

His most famous paintings are the ceiling painting of Genesis and the fresco The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican.

He also designed and preliminarily built St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and designed and built the mausoleum of Pope Julius II.

Michelangelo was short-tempered and unsociable, and could not get along with Da Vinci and Raphael, and often contradicted his benefactor, but he pursued artistic perfection all his life and insisted on his own artistic ideas.

Michelangelo was born in Caprese, Republic of Florence, in 1475 and died in Rome in 1564 at the age of 88. His style has influenced artists for almost three centuries.

The crater of asteroid 3001 and Mercury at 45.0°S and 109.1°W was named after him in honor and remembrance.

Michelangelo was born in 1475 in Caprese, near Arezzo, Tuscany (today's Caprese Michelangelo).

For generations, the family has been a small banker in Florence. But Michelangelo's father failed to keep the bank running, and instead took a break in government service.

At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was a magistrate in the small town of Caprese and a magistrate in Chusi.

Michelangelo's family claimed to be descendants of Mathilde of Canossa, Countess of Tuscany, but this has never been confirmed. Michelangelo, however, was convinced of this.

A few months after Michelangelo's birth, Michelangelo's family moved to Florence, where Michelangelo grew up ever since.

In 1481, when Michelangelo was only 6 years old, his mother died. Michelangelo was raised by a family of stonemasons in the small town of Cetignano. His father owned a marble quarry and a small farm in the town.

Giorgio Vasari quoted Michelangelo as saying, "If I have some merit. That's because I was born in the wonderful atmosphere of your country, Arezzo. Under the nurse's milk. I got the know-how to use a chisel and a hammer. That's how I use it to create characters. 」

When Michelangelo was a young boy, his father sent him to study grammar with Francesco da Urbino, a humanist in Florence.

Michelangelo, however, had no interest in going to school, preferring to copy church paintings and spend time with painters.

At the age of thirteen. Michelangelo became an apprentice to the painter Domenico Kirlandaio.

At the age of fourteen. Michelangelo's father persuaded Kirlandayo. As a result, Michelangelo could receive a salary from Kiranda according to the standard of a painter, which was highly unusual at the time.

In 1489, Lorenzo Medici, the de facto ruler of Florence, asked Kiranda to send two of his best students. Kirlandaio chose Michelangelo and Francesco Granaci.

Between 1490 and 1492, Michelangelo joined the Medici Family Faculty of Humanities, which advocated Neo-Platonism.

Michelangelo studied sculpture under the tutelage of Bertordo di Giovanni. In the Academy, Michelangelo's worldly outlook and artistic style were influenced by the most prominent philosophers and writers of the time, including Marsilio Ficcino, John Pico della Mirandola, and Poliziano.

During this period, Michelangelo created the battle of the Madonna and the centaur on the relief staircase. The latter subject matter comes from Poliziano's proposal, and the work is a commissioned work by Lorenzo Medici.

At the age of 17, Petro Torrigano, another of Bertolto di Giovanni's apprentices, shot Michelangelo in the nose during an altercation, causing him to lose his appearance. This apparent facial defect is reflected in all later portraits of Michelangelo.

On April 8, 1492, Lorenzo Medici died. Michelangelo's life was thus changed, and he left the protection of the Medici court and returned to his father's residence.

In the months that followed, he carved a wooden crucifixion (Michelangelo) as a gift to the abbot of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Florence.

This church allowed Michelangelo to use the corpses of the church hospital for anatomical studies.

Between 1493 and 1494, Michelangelo purchased a large block of marble and carved it into a slightly larger than life-size statue of Hercule.

The statue was later sent to France and lost in the 18th century. In 1494, after a heavy snowfall, Lorenzo's Medici heir, Piero II de' Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to make a sculpture out of snow, and Michelangelo returned to the Medici court.

In the same year, the monk Savonarola rose and the Medici family was expelled from Florence. Before the end of the political turmoil, Michelangelo left Florence and went first to Venice and then to Bologna.

In Bologna, he was commissioned to complete the carving of several small figures in the basilica of Santo Domingo, in the last part of the sculpture. In 1494, the political situation in Florence gradually calmed down.

King Charles VIII of France was defeated, and Florence was no longer threatened by the French army. Michelangelo returned to Florence, but the government of Savonarola did not commission him to compose.

Michelangelo then re-sought the commissions of the Medici family. During the six months he spent in Florence, he created two statuettes, one of the young St. John the Baptist and the other of the sleeping Cupid.

According to Michelangelo's biographer, Ascani Candivi, Lorenzo di Piercesco, the commissioner of the statue of St. John the Baptist, Lorenzo di Piercesco de Medici, asked Michelangelo to make the Cupid statue as if it had been unearthed, so that he could send the sculpture to Rome and sell it as an antiquity, thus making a lot of money.

However, both Lorenzo and Michelangelo unwittingly fell into the middleman's trap, who concealed the true price of the sculpture, so that more of the income from the sale fell into the middleman's pocket.

Cardinal Raphael Riario, the buyer of the sculpture, found that he was buying a sought, but he was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited Michelangelo to Rome.

The success of this creation, as well as the unfavorable circumstances in Florence, may have prompted Michelangelo to accept the bishop's invitation to travel to Rome.

Michelangelo arrived in Rome in 1496 at the age of 21. In the same year, he began to create for Cardinal Raphael Ríalio a statue of the Roman god of wine, Bacchus, slightly larger than a life-size figure.

However, after the statue was completed, the cardinal refused to accept the work. The statue of Bacchus was then placed in the garden of the banker Jacob Gari, where it became part of his collection. (To be continued......)