Editing Michelangelo (section)

==Legacy==
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[[File:Basílica de la Santa Cruz, Florencia, Italia, 2022-09-18, DD 110.jpg|thumb|upright|Tomb of Michelangelo (1578) by [[Giorgio Vasari]] in [[Santa Croce, Florence|Santa Croce]], Florence]]
Michelangelo, with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, is one of the three giants of the Florentine [[High Renaissance]]. Although their names are often cited together, Michelangelo was younger than Leonardo by 23 years, and eight years older than Raphael. Because of his reclusive nature, he had little to do with either artist and outlived both of them by more than 40 years. Michelangelo took few sculpture students. He employed Granacci, who was his fellow pupil at the Medici Academy, and became one of several assistants on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.<ref name="Goldscheider1962 12"/> Michelangelo appears to have used assistants mainly for the more manual tasks of preparing surfaces and grinding colours. Despite this, his works were to have a great influence on painters, sculptors and architects for many generations to come.

While Michelangelo's ''David'' is the most famous male nude of all time, some of his other works have had perhaps even greater impact on the course of art. The twisting forms and tensions of the ''Victory'', the ''Bruges Madonna'' and the ''Medici Madonna'' make them the heralds of the Mannerist art. The unfinished giants for the tomb of Pope Julius II had profound effect on sculptors such as Rodin and [[Henry Moore]].

Michelangelo's vestibule of the Laurentian Library was one of the earliest buildings to use classical forms in a plastic and expressive manner. This dynamic quality was later to find its major expression in his centrally planned St. Peter's, with its [[giant order]], its rippling cornice and its upward-launching pointed dome. The dome of St. Peter's was to influence the building of churches for many centuries, including [[Sant'Andrea della Valle]] in Rome and [[St Paul's Cathedral]], London, as well as the civic domes of public buildings and state capitals across the United States.

Artists who were directly influenced by Michelangelo include Raphael, whose monumental treatment of the figure in the ''[[School of Athens]]'' and ''[[The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple]]'' owes much to Michelangelo, and whose fresco of ''[[The Prophet Isaiah (Raphael)|Isaiah]]'' in Sant'Agostino closely imitates the older master's prophets.<ref>Ettlinger, Leopold David, and Helen S. Ettlinger. 1987. ''Raphael''. Oxford: Phaidon. pp. 91, 102, 122. {{ISBN|0-7148-2303-1}}.</ref> Other artists, such as [[Pontormo]], drew on the writhing forms of the ''Last Judgment'' and the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina.<ref>Acidini Luchinat, Cristina. 2002. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=WFuhUtCOmhsC&pg=PA96 The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence]''. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Detroit Institute of Arts. p. 96. {{ISBN|0-300-09495-7}}.</ref>

The Sistine Chapel ceiling was a work of unprecedented grandeur, both for its architectonic forms, to be imitated by many [[Baroque]] ceiling painters, and also for the wealth of its inventiveness in the study of figures. Vasari wrote:
{{blockquote|The work has proved a veritable beacon to our art, of inestimable benefit to all painters, restoring light to a world that for centuries had been plunged into darkness. Indeed, painters no longer need to seek for new inventions, novel attitudes, clothed figures, fresh ways of expression, different arrangements, or sublime subjects, for this work contains every perfection possible under those headings.<ref name=Vasari>[[Giorgio Vasari]], ''Lives of the Artists: Michelangelo''.</ref>}}