8 Works by Michelangelo You Should Know

Michelangelo Buonarotti was one of the key figures of the Italian Renaissance and art history. Equally gifted as a painter and a sculptor, he reportedly learned to sculpt objects from clay before he learned to read and write. His most famous works included Pieta, David, and the monumental ceiling paintings in the Sistine Chapel. Read on to learn more about Michelangelo Buonarotti’s most outstanding works.

Michelangelo Buonarotti was born into a privileged family with aristocratic roots and was never supposed to occupy himself with something like painting. In his time, painting and sculpture were deemed to be crafts suitable for the lower social class. Educated upper-class men were encouraged to develop their creative skills but never to make them their main occupation.

Michelangelo believed that his interest in sculpture was provoked by his foster family. After his mother died in yet another childbirth, Michelangelo’s father, unable to support a large family, temporarily gave the boy away to a local stonemason. There, he supposedly learned to work with clay and stone before he could read and write.

The painting The Torment of Saint Anthony is widely believed to be the earliest painted work by Michelangelo, executed when the artist was only 13 years old. Most art historians agree that it was a copy of a popular engraving by an Alsatian master Martin Schongauer. According to Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo wanted to make the image more detailed and convincing, thus he went to a local fish market to learn how to draw fish scales and flippers.

2. Pieta

Michelangelo’s father opposed his interest in the arts but could hardly exert any substantial influence on his son. Michelangelo was hardly interested in formal education but eagerly communicated with artists and copied artworks. At the age of 13, he started studying at the workshop of a prominent Florentine painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio. Just two years later, he, still a teenager, was noticed by the prominent Medici family of politicians and art patrons and moved into their palace. Rather swiftly, he became a well-recognized sculptor and painter.

Michelangelo created one of his most famous and outstanding masterpieces at the age of just 24. The famous Pieta was commissioned by the French ambassador to Rome. The commissioner gave only a year to complete the work, from which Michelangelo reportedly spent nine months to pick the right piece of marble. The sculpture of the Virgin Mary lamenting her dead son soon became legendary and synonymous with the idea of grief.

In 1972, a mentally unstable Australian geologist attacked the sculpture with a hammer, breaking off Mary’s arm and shattering her face. The attacker claimed that he was Jesus Christ himself and that God told him to destroy the blasphemous image. The sculpture was eventually restored and covered with protective glass, yet some activists believed it should be left intact as a reminder of the violent human nature.

Another famous project by Michelangelo had a long history that started decades before the work was completed. In the mid-1400s, the guild of Florentine wool merchants commissioned sixteen sculptures to decorate the Florence Cathedral, one of them featuring David. David, the Old Testament hero and the King of Israel, became famous as a young shepherd who killed the giant Goliath using not his force but his wit. Several sculptors began working on the sculpture using an expensive block of Carrara marble but failed. The block was left exposed to the elements for almost thirty years, believed unsuitable for sculpting.

Michelangelo volunteered to create a large sculpture from the damaged block in just three years. His innovation was seen in depicting the hero not after or during his attack but minutes before it, while thinking and evaluating his final blow.

Michelangelo’s obsession with the perfect human body went hand in hand with his rejection of his own body. According to his contemporaries, one of the features that bothered him the most was his broken nose, severely deformed after a fight with another sculptor. In the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, a gifted artist and notorious criminal, he described how Michelangelo and Pietro Torrigiano studied together, copying the works of Masaccio. Enraged by Michelangelo’s criticism, Torrigiano hit him in the nose, shattering the cartilage.

4. The Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Perhaps the only Michelangelo project that could rival Pieta’s popularity was the Sistine Chapel decoration, which was a challenge for both the commissioner and the artist. Michelangelo relied on his own artistic vision, almost entirely rejecting the ideas of Pope Julius II. To reach the ceiling and not obstruct religious services in the Chapel, he constructed a free-standing scaffolding that forced him to paint standing with his head thrown backward. As a result, he developed back pains and ear and eye infections caused by paint dripping on his face.

Michelangelo’s large-scale project included various scenes from the Old Testament, including Adam’s creation and the Genesis Flood. After the work’s completion, the Pope allegedly complained that not enough gold was used in decoration. Michelangelo retorted that these people were saints and prophets who were mostly poor and humble.

During his long life of 88 years, Michelangelo saw 13 different Popes and worked for nine of them. Despite his notorious temper and indifference to social rituals, he managed to charm and astonish commissioners with his art. In the mid-1510s, he worked on a project for Pope Julius II’s tomb. The composition included the sculpture of the prophet Moses.

The most puzzling element of the Moses sculpture was a pair of horns adorning his head. Contrary to our immediate expectation, this is not a sign of a demonic force or Moses’ association with Satan. Starting from approximately the 11th century, some artistic works featured the prophet with a set of horns of varying sizes. This tradition was a result of a faulty Old Testament translation that did not consider some nuances of the Hebrew language. In the book of Exodus, it was stated that after receiving the Ten Commandments from God, Moses descended to his people with horns surrounding his head. In reality, the translator confused the Hebrew spelling of the words horns and light, as the original stated that Moses was glowing after his interaction with God. The horns, however, survived in Western iconography for long and then were adopted by anti-semitic propaganda that linked Jewish people to the devil.

6. The Dying Slave

Another fragment of Julius II’s unfinished tomb was a series of sculptures of nude slaves. These figures were supposed to symbolize the knowledge and virtues of the deceased Pope. The most famous figure, The Dying Slave, allegedly symbolized the acceptance of one’s mortality. The physical perfection of the slaves’ sculptures provoked conversations on homoeroticism and Michelangelo’s possible homosexuality. Although some of the supposedly incriminating evidence was concealed by historians of the later eras, most of the experts today mention a series of love poems that the sculptor wrote to a young nobleman, Tommaso dei Cavalieri.

Michelangelo maintained contact with the Medici family and frequently worked on their commissions. One of the most prominent works was the Medici burial chamber—a family mausoleum in Florence. Michelangelo worked on it for fifteen years and yet did not get to finish it the way he initially planned to. Tasked with designing both the building and the sculptures inside it, Michelangelo made a revolutionary decision: instead of arranging the artworks within the mausoleum, he chose to let the structure follow the needs of the sculptures. The inside of the mausoleum was filled with dozens of sculptures of saints, Medici family members, and allegories of time and mortality.

The strangeness of the figures’ anatomy has long perplexed art experts. Particularly strange was the allegorical image of The Night—a sculpture of the unusually muscular woman with displaced and deformed breasts. Many art historians believe that Michelangelo was homosexual and did not like to work with female models, instead inviting young men to pose. Thus, he was less familiar with female bodies and their anatomy.

In 2000, American oncologist Dr. James J. Stark published a research paper containing a hypothesis that the sculpture’s weird breast shape indicated that the model had cancer. In this case, the image was not a negligent gesture but an acute observation. This theory, however, did not gain significant popularity, mostly because breasts were not the only anatomical issue of the sculpture. Still, The Night left its impact on art history, and it was copied by Peter Paul Rubens for his painting Leda and The Swan.

One of Michelangelo’s most famous paintings was part of his work on the decoration of the Sistine Chapel. The Last Judgment, however, was placed not on the ceiling but on the altar wall. According to the artist’s contemporaries, Pope Paul III, the commissioner of the work, was so impressed by it that he fell to his knees in front of the finished piece.

In 1564, the work was banned during the Catholic campaign against nudity in art. Pope Paul IV, offended by the image, proposed to destroy the mural completely, yet fortunately, he did not live long enough to complete the task. His successor, Pope Pius IV, was much more respectful of the arts, asking one of Michelangelo’s students, Daniele Ricciarelli, to paint some draperies over the figures’ exposed body parts. Still, he had to repaint several fragments that were considered too explicit completely.

Another popular theory around The Last Judgment concerns the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew in the central part of the fresco. According to the most widespread version, the saint’s face was either a self-portrait of Michelangelo, exhausted by the commission, or an image of his rival Pietro Aretino, who bothered Michelangelo with unsolicited advice concerning the work.