Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564) was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, and poet. Universally recognized as one of the greatest artists of all time, Michelangelo’s exceptionally long career dominated the Italian Renaissance.
Michelangelo was the most celebrated sculptor of the Renaissance and one of its greatest painters and architects. He is world-renowned for his ceiling frescos for the Sistine Chapel, his paintings commissioned by the sixteenth-century Florentine aristocracy, his work on the tomb of Pope Julius II, his many canvasses depicting scenes from the Bible, his famous Doni Tondo of the holy family at Florence’s Uffizi gallery, and his masterpiece The Last Judgment.
Born in Caprese, Arezzo province, Michelangelo spent his early years as an apprentice in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio. He was wholly devoted to art and religion, living frugally in spite of his fame.
Michelangelo achieved such renown in his life that he was celebrated as Il Divino (the “Divine One.”) He fashioned some of the key images of Western Christianity. He established his reputation with sculptures such as the Pietà (c.1497–1500) and David (1501–04.) Under papal sponsorship, he decorated the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome (1508–12) and painted the fresco The Last Judgment (1536–41,) both significant works of Mannerism.
Michelangelo devoted himself almost wholly to architecture and poetry after 1545. His architectural achievements include the completion of St. Peter’s Basilica (1546–64) in the Vatican.
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The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Art, Perfection
Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold; beyond the world she soars; the wise man, I affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes, nor will he lend his heart to aught that doth on time depend.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Soul
Led by long years to my last hours, too late, O world, I know your joys for what they are. You promise a peace which is not yours to give and the repose that dies before it is born. The years of fear and shame to which Heaven now set a term, renew nothing in me but the old sweet error in which, living overlong a man kills his soul with no gain to his body. I say and I know having put it to the proof, that he has the better part in Heaven whose death falls nearest his birth.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Death
Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Beauty
What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful that the garment with which it is clothed?
—Michelangelo
Topics: Spirituality, Spirit
In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action.
I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Attitude
Every beauty which is seen here below by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all come…
—Michelangelo
Topics: Perception, Beauty
The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Art
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Risk, Goals, Achievement
Everything hurts.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Pain
Patience is eternal genius.
—Michelangelo
I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.
—Michelangelo
Topics: City Life, Cities
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.
—Michelangelo
Topics: People, Excellence, Master, New, Work, Mastery
It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Work
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Art, Imagination, Angels
Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Death
This comes from dangling from the ceiling
—Michelangelo
Topics: The Artist
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Perfectionism
The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss, but that our aim is too low and we reach it.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Ideal, Great, Goals, Aspirations
My soul can find no staircase to heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness
—Michelangelo
Topics: Soul
The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one’s self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Promises, Self-Discovery, Assurance, Confidence
Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
—Michelangelo
Genius is eternal patience.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Resilience, Creativity, Genius, Patience
The stone unhewn and cold
Becomes a living mould,
The more the marble wastes
The more the statue grows.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Art
Criticize by creating.
—Michelangelo
Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Belief, Conviction, Faith, Confidence
The best artist has that thought alone
Which is contained within the marble shell;
The sculptor’s hand can only break the spell
To free the figures slumbering in the stone
—Michelangelo
Topics: The Artist
I am still learning.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Creativity
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Artists, Art, Arts
The goods of Fortune, even such as they really are, still need taste to enjoy them. It is the enjoying no the possessing, that makes us happy.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Character
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