The art of Michelangelo Buonarroti [1475-1564] is some of the most heroic in Renaissance art. He was an architect, poet, painter, and engineer. He considered himself as a artistic sculptor. At a very early age of twenty seven he already established his reputation in Florence, when he managed to carved a  free-standing larger than-life statue of the most famous biblical David from a gigantic block of Carrara marble, he always take on challenges which no other sculptor had ever dared tackle.

 Michelangelo completed the statue in1504. The rulers of Florence were placed at the entrance to the city for all to see as a form of symbol of Florentine Vigilance. Comparing Donatello’s lean and introspective youth, Michelangelo’s David is also a defiant presence, and the offspring of the giants’ race. The taut muscle of his body is tense and brooding, very powerful rather than graceful. Michelangelo drew to heroic proportions the Renaissance ideals ofterribilita and virtu.

Although he considered himself primarily sculptor, it took him four years to fulfill a papal commission to paint the 5,760 square foot ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. The enterprise reflected both the ambition of Pope Julius II and also the heroic aspirations of Michelangelo himself. While working from scaffolds poised some 70 feet above the floor he painted a vast scenario illustrating the creation and fall of humankind as it was recorded in Genesis. For the nine principal scenes, as well as the hundred of accompanying prophets and sibyls, he used high-keyed, clear, and bright colors. He overthrew many traditional constraints, minimizing setting, symbolic details and maximizing the grandeur of figures that-like those he carved in stone-seen superhuman in spirit. Michelangelo would further contribute to the magnificence of papal Rome.