Editing Michelangelo (section)

==Works==
{{Main|List of works by Michelangelo|commons:Michelangelo Buonarroti catalogue raisonné, 2007|l2=Michelangelo Buonarroti catalogue raisonné}}

===Madonna and Child===
The ''Madonna of the Stairs'' is Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble. It is carved in shallow relief, a technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th century, Donatello, and others such as [[Desiderio da Settignano]].<ref>Bartz and König, p. 8.</ref> While the Madonna is in profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's work. The ''[[Taddei Tondo]]'' of 1502 shows the Christ Child frightened by a [[Bullfinch]], a symbol of the Crucifixion.<ref name="Goldscheider1962 11"/> The lively form of the child was later adapted by Raphael in the ''[[Bridgewater Madonna]]''. The ''[[Madonna of Bruges]]'' was, at the time of its creation, unlike other such statues depicting the Virgin proudly presenting her son. Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's clasping hand, is about to step off into the world.<ref>Bartz and König, p. 22.</ref> The ''Doni Tondo'', depicting the Holy Family, has elements of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo. The twisting motion present in the ''Madonna of Bruges'' is accentuated in the painting. The painting heralds the forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.<ref name="Goldscheider1962 11"/>

<gallery widths="200" heights="200" perrow="4">
File:Michelangelo, madonna della scala, 1491 ca, 01.JPG|The ''[[Madonna of the Stairs]]'' (1490–1492)
File:Taddei Tondo.JPG|The ''[[Taddei Tondo]]'' (1502)
File:Madonna michelangelo1.jpg|''[[Madonna of Bruges]]'' (1504)
File:Tondo Doni, por Miguel Ángel.jpg|The ''[[Doni Tondo]]'' (1504–1506)
</gallery>

===Male figure===
The kneeling ''[[Angel (Michelangelo)|Angel]]'' is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca di San Domenico in the church dedicated to that saint in Bologna. Several other artists had worked on the scheme, beginning with [[Nicola Pisano]] in the 13th century. In the late 15th century, the project was managed by [[Niccolò dell'Arca]]. An angel holding a candlestick, by Niccolò, was already in place.<ref name="Goldscheider1962 9">{{cite book |last1=Buonarroti |first1=Michelangelo |last2=Goldscheider |first2=Ludwig |title=Michelangelo: Paintings, Sculptures, Architecture |year=1962 |publisher=Phaidon Publishers |page=9|url=https://archive.org/details/michaelangelo0000unse_h2o4/page/8/mode/2up}}</ref> Although the two angels form a pair, there is a great contrast between the two works, the one depicting a delicate child with flowing hair clothed in Gothic robes with deep folds, and Michelangelo's depicting a robust and muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style. Everything about Michelangelo's ''Angel'' is dynamic.<ref>Hirst and Dunkerton, pp. 20–21.</ref> Michelangelo's ''Bacchus'' was a commission with a specified subject, the youthful [[Bacchus|God of Wine]]. The sculpture has all the traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet. While the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality, which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.<ref>Bartz and König, pp. 26–27.</ref>

In the so-called ''Dying Slave'', Michelangelo again utilised the figure with marked [[contraposto|contrapposto]] to suggest a particular human state, in this case waking from sleep. With the ''Rebellious Slave'', it is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius II, now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost finished state.<ref>Bartz and König, pp. 62–63.</ref> These two works were to have a profound influence on later sculpture, through [[Rodin]] who studied them at the Louvre.<ref>Yvon Taillandier, ''Rodin'', New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks, (1977) {{ISBN|0-517-88378-3}}.</ref> The ''[[Atlas Slave]]'' is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb. The works, known collectively as ''The Captives'', each show the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the rock in which it is lodged. The works give a unique insight into the sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he perceived within the rock.<ref>Coughlan, pp. 166–67.</ref>

<gallery widths="200px" heights="200px" perrow="4">
File:Autori vari, arca di san domenico, angelo reggicandelabro di michelangelo, 1494, 02.jpg|''[[Angel (Michelangelo)|Angel]]'' by Michelangelo, early work (1494–95)
File:Michelangelo Bacchus.jpg|''[[Bacchus (Michelangelo)|Bacchus]]'' by Michelangelo, early work (1496–1497)
File:'Dying Slave' Michelangelo JBU001.jpg|''[[Dying Slave]]'', [[Louvre]] (1513)
File:Michelangelo - Atlas.jpg|''[[Atlas Slave]]'' (1530–1534)
</gallery>

===Sistine Chapel ceiling===
{{main|Sistine Chapel ceiling}}
[[File:Vatican Museums-6 (263).jpg|thumb|The west end of the [[Sistine Chapel ceiling]]]]
The Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted between 1508 and 1512.<ref name="Bartz134"/> The ceiling is a flattened [[barrel vault]] supported on twelve triangular pendentives that rise from between the windows of the chapel. The commission, as envisaged by Julius II, was to adorn the pendentives with figures of the twelve apostles.<ref>Goldscieder, p. 12.</ref> Michelangelo, who was reluctant to take the job, persuaded the Pope to give him a free hand in the composition.<ref name=PR402/> The resultant scheme of decoration awed his contemporaries and has inspired other artists ever since.<ref>Vasari, et al.</ref> The scheme is of nine panels illustrating episodes from the Book of Genesis, set in an architectonic frame. On the pendentives, Michelangelo replaced the proposed Apostles with Prophets and Sibyls who heralded the coming of the [[Messiah]].<ref name=PR402>Paoletti and Radke, pp. 402–03.</ref>

Michelangelo began painting with the later episodes in the narrative, the pictures including locational details and groups of figures, the ''Drunkenness of Noah'' being the first of this group.<ref name=PR402/> In the later compositions, painted after the initial scaffolding had been removed, Michelangelo made the figures larger.<ref name=PR402/> One of the central images, ''The Creation of Adam'' is one of the best known and most reproduced works in the history of art.<ref name="Marinazzo-2022b" /> The final panel, showing the ''[[Separation of Light from Darkness]]'' is the broadest in style and was painted in a single day. As the model for the Creator, Michelangelo has depicted himself in the action of painting the ceiling.<ref name=PR402/>

As supporters to the smaller scenes, Michelangelo painted twenty youths who have variously been interpreted as angels, as muses, or simply as decoration. Michelangelo referred to them as "ignudi".<ref>Bartz and König.</ref> The figure reproduced may be seen in context in the above image of the ''Separation of Light from Darkness''.
In the process of painting the ceiling, Michelangelo made studies for different figures, of which some, such as that for ''The Libyan Sibyl'' have survived, demonstrating the care taken by Michelangelo in details such as the hands and feet.<ref>Coughlan.</ref> The prophet Jeremiah, contemplating the downfall of Jerusalem, is a self-portrait.
<gallery widths="200px" heights="200px" perrow="4">
File:Michelangelo libyan.jpg|Studies for ''The Libyan Sibyl''
File:Michelangelo the libyan.jpg|''The Libyan Sibyl'' (1511)
File:Michelangelo Buonarroti 027.jpg|''The Prophet Jeremiah'' (1511)
File:'Ignudo' by Michelangelo JBU33.jpg|''Ignudo''
</gallery>

===Figure compositions===
{{more citations needed section|date=December 2024}}
Michelangelo's relief of the ''Battle of the Centaurs'', created while he was still a youth associated with the Medici Academy,<ref>J. de Tolnay, ''The Youth of Michelangelo'', p. 18.</ref> is an unusually complex relief in that it shows a great number of figures involved in a vigorous struggle. Such a complex disarray of figures was rare in Florentine art, where it would usually only be found in images showing either the [[Massacre of the Innocents]] or the Torments of Hell. The relief treatment, in which some of the figures are boldly projecting, may indicate Michelangelo's familiarity with Roman [[sarcophagus]] reliefs from the collection of Lorenzo Medici, and similar marble panels created by Nicola and [[Giovanni Pisano]], and with the figurative compositions on [[Ghiberti]]'s [[Florence Baptistery#Lorenzo Ghiberti|Baptistry Doors]].

The composition of the ''Battle of Cascina'' is known in its entirety only from copies,<ref>Goldscheider, p. 8.</ref> as the original cartoon, according to Vasari, was so admired that it deteriorated and was eventually in pieces.<ref name=Vasari/> It reflects the earlier relief in the energy and diversity of the figures,<ref>J. de Tolnay, ''The Youth of Michelangelo'', p. 135.</ref> with many different postures, and many being viewed from the back, as they turn towards the approaching enemy and prepare for battle.

In ''The Last Judgment'' it is said that Michelangelo drew [[Artistic inspiration|inspiration]] from a fresco by [[Melozzo da Forlì]] in Rome's [[Santi Apostoli, Rome|Santi Apostoli]]. Melozzo had depicted figures from different angles, as if they were floating in the Heaven and seen from below. Melozzo's majestic figure of Christ, with windblown cloak, demonstrates a degree of foreshortening of the figure that had also been employed by [[Andrea Mantegna]], but was not usual in the frescos of Florentine painters. In ''The Last Judgment'' Michelangelo had the opportunity to depict, on an unprecedented scale, figures in the action of either rising heavenward or falling and being dragged down.

In the two frescos of the Pauline Chapel, ''The Crucifixion of St. Peter'' and ''The Conversion of Saul'', Michelangelo has used the various groups of figures to convey a complex narrative. In the ''Crucifixion of Peter'' soldiers busy themselves about their assigned duty of digging a post hole and raising the cross while various people look on and discuss the events. A group of horrified women cluster in the foreground, while another group of Christians is led by a tall man to witness the events. In the right foreground, Michelangelo walks out of the painting with an expression of disillusionment.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Michelangelo in the Pauline Chapel, the artist's least known work |url=https://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Michelangelo-in-The-Pauline-Chapel.html |access-date=2024-08-16 |website=Italian Renaissance Art.com}}</ref>

<gallery widths="200" heights="200" perrow="4">
File:Michelangelo, centauromachia, 1492 ca. 01 crop.JPG|''[[Battle of the Centaurs (Michelangelo)|Battle of the Centaurs]]'' (1492)
File:La batalla de Cascina - Sangallo.jpg|Copy of the lost ''[[Battle of Cascina]]'' by [[Bastiano da Sangallo]]
File:Michelangelo, giudizio universale, dettagli 33.jpg|''[[The Last Judgment (Michelangelo)|The Last Judgment]]'', detail of the Redeemed (see whole image above)
File:Michelangelo, paolina, martirio di san pietro 01.jpg|''[[The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Michelangelo)|The Crucifixion of St. Peter]]''
</gallery>

===Architecture===
[[File:Biblioteca medicea laurenziana, vestibolo e scala di michelangelo, 07.jpg|thumb|The vestibule of the [[Laurentian Library]] in Florence]]
Michelangelo's architectural commissions included a number that were not realised, notably the façade for Brunelleschi's Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model constructed, but which remains to this day unfinished rough brick. At the same church, Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to design the Medici Chapel and the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici.<ref>Goldscheider.</ref> Pope Clement also commissioned the Laurentian Library, for which Michelangelo also designed the extraordinary vestibule with columns recessed into niches, and a staircase that appears to spill out of the library like a flow of lava, according to [[Nikolaus Pevsner]], "...&nbsp;revealing [[Mannerism]] in its most sublime [[architectural form]]".<ref>Nikolaus Pevsner, ''An Outline of European Architecture'', Pelican, 1964.</ref>

In 1546 Michelangelo produced the highly complex ovoid design for the pavement of the [[Campidoglio]] and began designing an upper storey for the [[Farnese Palace]]. In 1547 he took on the job of completing St Peter's Basilica, begun to a design by Bramante, and with several intermediate designs by several architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante's design, retaining the basic form and concepts by simplifying and strengthening the design to create a more dynamic and unified whole.<ref name="Gardner">Gardner.</ref> Although the late 16th-century engraving depicts the dome as having a hemispherical profile, the dome of Michelangelo's model is somewhat ovoid and the final product, as completed by [[Giacomo della Porta]], is more so.<ref name="Gardner"/>

===Final years===
{{multiple image | direction = horizontal | total_width= 450 | header = | footer = | image1 = Pieta Bandini Opera Duomo Florence n01.jpg | alt1 = aaa | caption1 =Self-portrait of the artist as [[Nicodemus]] | image2 = Pietà per Vittoria Colonna.jpg | alt2 =bbb | caption2 = The ''Pietà of Vittoria Colonna'' (c. 1540) | image3 = Michelangelo pietà rondanini.jpg | alt3 =ccc| caption3 =The ''[[Rondanini Pietà]]'' (1552–1564) }}
In his old age, Michelangelo created a number of ''Pietàs'' in which he apparently reflects upon mortality. They are heralded by the ''[[The Genius of Victory|Victory]]'', perhaps created for the tomb of Pope Julius II but left unfinished. In this group, the youthful victor overcomes an older hooded figure, with the features of Michelangelo. The ''Pietà of Vittoria Colonna'' is a chalk drawing of a type described as "presentation drawings", as they might be given as a gift by an artist, and were not necessarily studies towards a painted work. In this image, Mary's upraised arms and hands are indicative of her prophetic role. The frontal aspect is reminiscent of Masaccio's fresco of the [[Holy Trinity]] in the [[Basilica of Santa Maria Novella]], Florence. In the ''Florentine Pietà'', Michelangelo again depicts himself, this time as the aged [[Nicodemus]] lowering the body of Jesus from the cross into the arms of Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene. Michelangelo smashed the left arm and leg of the figure of Jesus. His pupil [[Tiberio Calcagni]] repaired the arm and drilled a hole in which to fix a replacement leg which was not subsequently attached. He also worked on the figure of Mary Magdalene.<ref>Maiorino, Giancarlo, 1990. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Raf5I8SLQhQC&pg=PA28 The Cornucopian Mind and the Baroque Unity of the Arts]''. Penn State Press. p. 28. {{ISBN|0-271-00679-X}}.</ref><ref>Di Cagno, Gabriella. 2008. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=jDCKhi-QHSoC&pg=PA58 Michelangelo]''. Oliver Press. p. 58. {{ISBN|1-934545-01-5}}.</ref>

The last sculpture that Michelangelo worked on (six days before his death), the ''[[Rondanini Pietà]],'' could never be completed because Michelangelo carved it away until there was insufficient stone. The legs and a detached arm remain from a previous stage of the work. As it remains, the sculpture has an abstract quality, in keeping with 20th-century concepts of sculpture.<ref>Tolnay, Charles de. 1960. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=xy8qxGlF4jcC&pg=PA117 Michelangelo.: V, The Final Period: Last Judgment. Frescoes of the Pauline Chapel. Last Pietas]'' Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. p. 154. {{OCLC|491820830}}.</ref><ref>Crispina, Enrica. 2001. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=xy8qxGlF4jcC&q=Rondanini+Piet%C3%A0+arm Michelangelo]''. Firenze: Giunti. p. 117. {{ISBN|88-09-02274-2}}.</ref>

Michelangelo died in Rome on 18 February 1564,<ref>{{cite web | title=Michelangelo | website=Oxford Reference | date=22 February 1999 | url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100155121 | access-date=17 February 2023}}</ref> at the age of 88. His body was taken from Rome for interment at the [[Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence|Basilica of Santa Croce]], fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Florence.<ref>Coughlan, p. 179.</ref> His heir Lionardo Buonarroti commissioned Vasari to design and build the ''Tomb of Michelangelo'', a monumental project that cost 770 [[scudi]], and took over 14 years to complete.<ref name="Grossoni-2017">{{Cite news|date=12 October 2017|title=Michelangelo's tomb: five fun facts you probably didn't know|url=https://www.theflorentine.net/2017/10/12/michelangelo-tomb-facts/|access-date=20 May 2021|website=The Florentine|language=en-US|last1=Grossoni |first1=Donata }}</ref> Marble for the tomb was supplied by [[Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany|Cosimo I de' Medici]], Duke of Tuscany, who had also organized a state funeral to honour Michelangelo in Florence.<ref name="Grossoni-2017" />