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Michelangelo Contributions

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Michelangelo was born in Caprese, region of Florence – Italy on March 6, 1475, was born to a family that had for several generations belonged to minor nobility in Florence but had, by the time the artist was born, lost its patrimony and status. His father was an official with a well-off position in the city and his mother died when he was 6 years old.
Son of the Florentine arts, this magnificent sculptor, painter and architect, of the Italian Renaissance manifested his artistic talent since very early on, being the art of the sculpture where he begins to emerge.
Having to overcome the opposition of his family, at the age of 13 a family friend took him to the workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, particularly known for his murals, where he entered in April of 1488, as an apprentice for a three-year term. He remained there for only a year, after which, under the tutelage of Bertoldo di Giovanni, he began to frequent the Medici Garden of San Marco, and his talent drew the attention of Florence’s leading citizen and art patron, Lorenzo de’ Medici, who enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of being surrounded by the city’s most literate, poetic and talented men. De’ Medici extended an invitation to Michelangelo to reside in his palatial home of Via Larga, where Buonarotti meet Poliziano and other humanists of the Medicean circle, where he got in touch with the idealist theories of Plato, which become in one of the fundamental pillars of his life, and later on there were reflected in his artistic work as a poet. From this youthful phase, the art of Michelangelo presented original features that went beyond the simple imitation of the old. His figures showed an intense strength, and appeared as if seized by an internal tension. The obsession with the representation of the human body was a constant in his career. This interest in the human figure, and more specifically in men, has been explained through the homosexuality of the artist, since his relationship with the young patrician Tommaso dei Cavalieri is documented during his years of maturity. Between 1490 and 1492, Michelangelo made his first drawings, studies on the Gothic frescoes of Massacio and Giotto and the first reliefs, the Virgin della Scala

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