Michelangelo

Michelangelo Buonarroti is arguably one of the most inspired creators in the history of art and the most potent force in the Italian High Renaissance. As a sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, he exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent Western art in general.

Michelangelo was born March 6, 1475, in the small village of Caprese near Arezzo. He lived during the Italian High Renaissance. Although he was born in Caprese, he lived in Florentine. There he created some of the most spectacular works of art ever. One in particular was the statue David.

Michelangelo had a serious reason for creating this statue. He made this statue to show the people who David, the Old Testament hero who defeated

Goliath, actually was.

David is shown by Michelangelo as a lithe nude youth, muscular and alert, looking off into the distance as if sizing up the enemy Goliath. The fiery intensity of David’s facial expression is termed terribilità, a feature characteristic of many of Michelangelo’s figures and of his own personality.

David, Michelangelo’s most famous sculpture, became the symbol of

Florence and originally was place in the Piazza della Signoria in front of the

Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall.

With this statue, Michelangelo proved to his contemporaries that he not only surpassed all modern artists, but also the Greeks and Romans, by infusing formal beauty with powerful expressiveness and meaning.

Michelangelo’s David does not make me feel a...