Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni [ a ] 6 March β 18 February , known mononymously as Michelangelo , [ b ] [ 1 ] was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, [ 2 ] and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence , his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man , along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci.
He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era. Michelangelo achieved fame early. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and The Last Judgment on its altar wall.
His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the Western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death. Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.
One of them, by Giorgio Vasari , proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was "supreme in not one art alone but in all three". In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino "the divine one". Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate [ 9 ] the expressive physicality of Michelangelo's style contributed to the rise of Mannerism , a short-lived movement in Western art between the High Renaissance and the Baroque.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on 6 March [ c ] in Caprese , known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina, [ 10 ] near Arezzo , Tuscany. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena.
