Michelangelo: 11 works

'Although Michelangelo considered himself first and foremost a sculptor, he received his early training as a painter, in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio (c. 1449--1494), a leading master in Florence. Michelangelo's earliest biographers, Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi, tell us that, aside from some drawings, his first work was a painted copy of the engraving Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons by the fifteenth-century German master Martin Schongauer.'

'Michelangelo, one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, epitomises the ideal of universal artistic genius, excelling as a sculptor, an architect and a painter.'

'The Doni Tondo is the most famous among the very few paintings on panel by Michelangelo, made on commission from the Florentine merchant Agnolo Doni for his wedding to Maddalena Strozzi in 1504.'

'Michelangelo was experimenting with the position of the arms and hands, as we see from his corrections to the contours.'

'Michelangelo drew another study, that of a male torso, after rotating the sheet 180 degrees.'

'Michelangelo was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II in 1505, spending the years 1508 to 1512 decorating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.'

'The handful of 'presentation drawings' that Michelangelo produced during the latter half of his life, and especially around 1530, stand at the very pinnacle of European draughtsmanship.'

'The sculpture, originally meant for the funeral monument of pope Giulius II Della Rovere, was donated to Duke Cosimo I de' Medici in 1564, after Michelangelo's death, by his nephew Leonardo.'

'But as a celebrated artist in his own lifetime Michelangelo's compositions were sometimes reproduced by his pupils.'

'This magnificent drawing represents Michelangelo's design for an altarpiece commissioned around 1547 for the Cesi family chapel in Santa Maria della Pace, Rome.'

'Some believe it to be a bozzetto (an early small-sized model made of fired clay), others think consider it to be a replica made in Michelangelo's workshop, probably by Antonio Mini, with some finishing touches added by the great master.'