Primarily a sculptor, he created two of the most enduring masterpieces before the age of 30. These would be the Pieta' and his David. Click images below to enlarge.
Like any genius artist, he was praised and vilified equally. Some called him Il Divino ("the divine one"), while others denigrated him as "inventor delle porcherie" ("inventor of obscenities", in the original Italian language referring to "pork things"). The morons of the Counter-Reformation started with Michelangelo when they sought to cover up all the nudity and genitalia they saw as obscene. Fucking idiots. They were all afraid of getting hard-ons.
Also like many great artists, Michelangelo was a freak.
He told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: "However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man." Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating "more out of necessity than of pleasure" and that he "often slept in his clothes and ... boots." These habits may have made him unpopular. His biographer Paolo Giovio says, "His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him." He may not have minded, since he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person. He had a reputation for being bizzarro e fantastico because he "withdrew himself from the company of men."
The image below is a detail from part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling he painted, depicting the Fall and Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Click the image below for a full view of the scene.
Happy Birthday Michelangelo.
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