In a small second-floor home on Via Bentaccordi in Florence, Lodovico and Francesca Buonarroti worried about their four sons. A paralyzing fear was gripping the city, for the latest outbreak of the plague had already killed hundreds. The young parents were particularly concerned for their second son, Michelangelo, who had always been sickly. It was ...
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“After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-sized figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was 37, yet my friends did not recognize the old man I had become.”
As he stood alone in the middle of the chapel, Michelangelo remembered the days of his boyhood when he skipped school to watch the painters in the Tornabuoni Chapel. He had dreamed it would be him painting those walls someday. He lay down on the floor of the chapel so he could look up at ...
The entire rear half of the ceiling was covered with a scaffold that looked like it was caught up in a spider’s web. It was suspended from ropes that were tied to the rafters and hung down through holes drilled in the plaster ceiling. Michelangelo hurried up the scaffold to get a closer look at ...
Michelangelo passed the sweltering August night in his workshop, awake. He slumped over his drafting table, drinking a bottle of Chianti his brother Buonarroto had sent him. It was impossible to forget the stinging words of his critics that day. Where’s the theme? one cardinal had asked. He’s really not very good at foreshortening, Bramante ...
Michelangelo Buonarroti
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim to high and falling short, but in setting our aim to low, and achieving our mark.”
People, Places & Artworks in Michelangelo’s Puzzle