Editing Michelangelo (section)

===Bologna, Florence, and Rome, 1492–1499===
Lorenzo de' Medici's death on 8 April 1492 changed Michelangelo's circumstances.<ref name="Tolnay2021">J. de Tolnay, ''The Youth of Michelangelo'', pp. 20–21</ref> He left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he carved a polychrome wooden ''[[Crucifix (Michelangelo)|Crucifix]]'' (1493), as a gift to the prior of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, which had allowed him to do some [[anatomical]] studies of the corpses from the church's hospital.<ref name="Condivi17">A. Condivi, ''The Life of Michelangelo'', p. 17</ref> This was the first of several instances during his career that Michelangelo studied anatomy by dissecting cadavers.<ref>Laurenzo, Domenico (2012). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=u_U59cV_UCsC&pg=PA15 Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy: Images from a Scientific Revolution]''. Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 15. {{ISBN|1588394565}}.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first1=A. |last1=Zeybek |last2=Özkan |first2=M. |title=Michelangelo and Anatomy |journal=Anatomy: International Journal of Experimental & Clinical Anatomy |volume=13 |issue=Supplement 2 |date=August 2019 |page=S199 }}</ref>

Between 1493 and 1494, Michelangelo bought a block of marble, and carved a larger-than-life statue of [[Hercules]].<ref name="Condivi15" />{{efn|1=The ''Hercules'' statue was sent to France and subsequently disappeared sometime in the 18th century.<ref name="Condivi15" /> After the [[Strozzi family]] acquired it, [[Filippo Strozzi the Younger|Filippo Strozzi]] sold it to [[Francis I of France|Francis I]] in 1529. In 1594, [[Henry IV of France|Henry IV]] installed it in the Jardin d'Estange at [[Fontainebleau]] where it disappeared in 1713 when the Jardin d'Estange was destroyed.}} On 20 January 1494, after heavy snowfalls, Lorenzo's heir, [[Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici|Piero de Medici]], commissioned a statue made of snow, and Michelangelo again entered the court of the Medici.<ref>{{cite book|last=Coughlan|first=Robert|title=The World of Michelangelo: 1475–1564|url=https://archive.org/details/worldofmichaelan0000unse|url-access=limited|others=et al|publisher=Time-Life Books|year=1966|page=[https://archive.org/details/worldofmichaelan0000unse/page/67 67]}}</ref> In the same year, the Medici were expelled from Florence as the result of the rise of [[Savonarola]]. Michelangelo left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to [[Venice]] and then to [[Bologna]].<ref name="Tolnay2021" /> In Bologna, he was commissioned to carve several of the last small figures for the completion of the [[Arca di San Domenico|Shrine of St. Dominic]], in the church dedicated to that saint. At this time Michelangelo studied the robust reliefs carved by [[Jacopo della Quercia]] around the main portal of the [[San Petronio Basilica|Basilica of St Petronius]], including the panel of ''The Creation of Eve'', the composition of which was to reappear on the [[Sistine Chapel ceiling]].<ref>Bartz and König, p. 54</ref> Towards the end of 1495, the political situation in Florence was calmer; the city, previously under threat from the French, was no longer in danger as [[Charles VIII of France|Charles VIII]] had suffered defeats. Michelangelo returned to Florence but received no commissions from the new city government under Savonarola.<ref>Miles Unger, ''Michelangelo: a Life in Six Masterpieces'', ch. 1</ref> He returned to the employment of the Medici.<ref name="Tolnay2425">J. de Tolnay, ''The Youth of Michelangelo'', pp. 24–25</ref> During the half-year he spent in Florence, he worked on two small statues, a child ''St. John the Baptist'' and a sleeping ''[[Cupid (Michelangelo)|Cupid]]''. According to Condivi, [[Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici]], for whom Michelangelo had sculpted ''St. John the Baptist'', asked that Michelangelo "fix it so that it looked as if it had been buried" so he could "send it to Rome&nbsp;... pass [it off as] an ancient work and&nbsp;... sell it much better." Both Lorenzo and Michelangelo were unwittingly cheated out of the real value of the piece by a middleman. Cardinal [[Raffaele Riario]], to whom Lorenzo had sold it, discovered that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome.<ref name="Condivi1920">A. Condivi, ''The Life of Michelangelo'', pp. 19–20</ref>{{efn|1=Vasari makes no mention of this episode and [[Paolo Giovio]]'s ''Life of Michelangelo'' indicates that Michelangelo tried to pass the statue off as an antique himself.}} This apparent success in selling his sculpture abroad as well as the conservative Florentine situation may have encouraged Michelangelo to accept the prelate's invitation.<ref name="Tolnay2425" />

[[File:Michelangelo's Pieta 5450 cropncleaned edit.jpg|thumb|''[[Pietà (Michelangelo)|Pietà]]'', St Peter's Basilica (1498–1499)]]
Michelangelo arrived in Rome on 25 June 1496<ref name="Tolnay2628">J. de Tolnay, ''The Youth of Michelangelo'', pp. 26–28</ref> at the age of 21. On 4 July of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god ''[[Bacchus (Michelangelo)|Bacchus]]''. Upon completion, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden.<ref>Erin Sutherland Minter, "Discarded deity: The rejection of Michelangelo's Bacchus and the artist's response", Renaissance Studies 28, no. 3 (2013)</ref><ref>Luba Freedman, "Michelangelo's Reflections on Bacchus", Artibus et Historiae 24, no. 47 (2003)</ref> In November 1497, the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal [[Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas|Jean de Bilhères-Lagraulas]], commissioned him to carve a ''[[Pietà (Michelangelo)|Pietà]]'', a sculpture showing the [[St Mary|Virgin Mary]] grieving over the body of Jesus. The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of medieval northern Europe and would have been very familiar to the Cardinal.<ref name=Hirst47/> The contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its completion.<ref name=Hirst47>Hirst and Dunkerton pp. 47–55</ref> It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture, "a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture". Contemporary opinion was summarised by Vasari: "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh."<ref>Vasari, ''Lives of the painters: Michelangelo''</ref> Michelangelo's only work known to have been signed, his name on Mary's sash, it is now located in [[St Peter's Basilica]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Majanlahti |first=Anthony |date=2023-03-30 |title=Michelangelo's Signature and the Myth of Genius |url=https://hyperallergic.com/781165/michelangelos-signature-and-the-myth-of-genius/ |access-date=2025-03-07 |website=Hyperallergic |language=en-US}}</ref>