Michelangelo

Michelangelo Buonarroti stands as one of history's most extraordinary figures, a Renaissance master whose life contained more bizarre anecdotes, skullduggery, and outrageous behavior than any modern novelist would dare invent. Born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, a small town in the Tuscan hills, he entered a world that would witness his transformation from an unwashed, cantankerous youth into the most celebrated artist of his age, earning him the nickname Il Divino, the Divine One.

The circumstances of Michelangelo's childhood read like something from a picaresque novel. When his mother Francesca fell seriously ill, the infant was sent to live with a stonecutter's family in the countryside, where he spent his earliest years surrounded by marble dust and chisels. This arrangement would prove prophetic, as Michelangelo later claimed he sucked in the love of sculpture with his wet nurse's milk. His father, Ludovico, belonged to the minor nobility but struggled financially, taking various government positions to keep the family afloat. The family business was small-scale banking, a trade passed down through generations, but Ludovico's failures freed his son from commercial expectations and inadvertently launched one of history's greatest artistic careers.

From his earliest days, Michelangelo displayed the combative personality that would define his entire existence. At seventeen, while studying art under the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici alongside other talented youths, he engaged in the most famous fight in art history. His fellow apprentice Pietro Torrigiano, driven to fury by Michelangelo's habit of mocking everyone else's work, delivered a devastating punch that crushed his nose like a biscuit. Torrigiano later boasted to fellow artist Benvenuto Cellini that he felt bone and cartilage go down like biscuit beneath my knuckles, and this mark of mine he will carry with him to the grave. The broken nose is visible in every portrait of Michelangelo ever made, a permanent reminder of his sharp tongue and its consequences.

This incident reveals much about Michelangelo's character. Even as a teenager, he possessed an arrogant confidence in his abilities that manifested as cruel criticism of others. Giorgio Vasari, his contemporary and biographer, noted that it was Michelangelo's habit to banter all who were drawing there, suggesting this wasn't an isolated incident but a pattern of behavior. The young artist seemed incapable of keeping his opinions to himself, a trait that would both advance and complicate his career throughout his life.

What made Michelangelo truly extraordinary was not just his artistic genius but his complete disregard for conventional social norms, particularly regarding personal hygiene. Despite achieving enormous wealth and fame, he lived in conditions that would shame a medieval peasant. Multiple contemporary sources describe his appalling cleanliness habits with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. His biographer Ascanio Condivi, who knew him personally, reported that Michelangelo often slept in his clothes and in the boots which he has always worn for reason of cramp, and sometimes he has been so long in taking them off that subsequently along with his boots, he sloughed off his skin, like a snake's.

This wasn't merely an eccentric affectation but a systematic rejection of basic hygiene that bordered on the pathological. Paolo Giovio, another contemporary, described his domestic habits as incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him. The artist rarely bathed, never changed his clothes, and worked in a state of filth that contemporary observers found shocking even by Renaissance standards. When he died, his clothes had to be cut and peeled from his body because they had become so encrusted with dirt and sweat that they had essentially fused with his skin.

The most remarkable aspect of this personal squalor was how it coexisted with his creation of works of sublime beauty and perfection. While living like a hermit in self-imposed filth, Michelangelo produced sculptures and paintings that embodied idealized human form and divine inspiration. This contradiction fascinated his contemporaries and continues to puzzle historians. Some scholars suggest his deliberate rejection of worldly comforts, including basic cleanliness, represented a form of artistic asceticism, a rejection of physical pleasure in pursuit of spiritual and creative transcendence.

Michelangelo's relationship with Pope Julius II provides some of the most entertaining and revealing anecdotes of Renaissance politics and personality. Julius II, known as the Warrior Pope for his habit of personally leading military campaigns while wearing armor, was equally combative and headstrong as his artist. When Julius commissioned Michelangelo to create his tomb in 1505, the project became a forty-year nightmare that the artist called the tragedy of the tomb. The Pope would change his mind constantly, abandon projects without explanation, and treat Michelangelo with what the artist considered insufferable discourtesy.

The most famous incident occurred when Julius, impatient with the tomb's progress, decided instead to commission Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo initially refused, correctly suspecting that his rivals in Rome, particularly the architect Donato Bramante, had convinced the Pope to assign him this task hoping to see him fail. The artist protested that he was a sculptor, not a painter, and had never attempted a fresco of such enormous scale. When Julius insisted, Michelangelo reluctantly accepted, but not before delivering one of history's most cutting insults to papal authority.

The story, preserved in oral tradition, describes how Julius caught Michelangelo apparently resting during work on the chapel. Enraged by what he perceived as laziness, the Pope stormed over and demanded, Why are you sitting there? Get back to work! Michelangelo, with characteristic quick wit and stunning audacity, replied, I'm not just sitting! I'm contemplating the mysteries of God! Even the formidable Julius II reportedly could not suppress laughter at this cheeky response, recognizing perhaps that divine inspiration required more than mere physical labor.

The Sistine Chapel project itself generated extraordinary anecdotes that reveal both Michelangelo's genius and his capacity for spite. Forced to learn fresco technique as he worked, he created increasingly complex and ambitious scenes, ultimately painting over three hundred figures across 12,000 square feet of ceiling. The physical demands were tremendous. Contrary to popular belief, he did not paint lying down but spent years standing on scaffolding with his head tilted back at impossible angles, paint dripping into his face and eyes. He wrote a poem during this period describing his agony: My brush, above my face continually makes it splendid by dripping down.

But Michelangelo's most delicious act of revenge was reserved for a Vatican official named Biagio da Cesena, who criticized the nudity in The Last Judgment as more appropriate for a tavern than a chapel. Michelangelo responded by painting Cesena's face onto Minos, the judge of the underworld, complete with donkey ears and a snake biting his penis. When Cesena complained to the Pope about this insulting portrayal, Pope Paul III reportedly replied that his jurisdiction did not extend to hell, so the portrait would remain forever.

The artist's capacity for holding grudges was legendary, as was his willingness to express them through his art. His rivalry with Leonardo da Vinci produced one of the most bitter feuds in art history. The two titans of Renaissance art felt an intense dislike for each other, according to Vasari, with their fierce independence leading to clashes whenever circumstances brought them face-to-face. One recorded incident describes Leonardo being asked to explain a passage from Dante by some gentlemen in a Florence piazza. Just as Leonardo prepared to respond, Michelangelo appeared, and Leonardo sarcastically suggested that Michelangelo could explain it instead, since he was the one who had failed to complete his bronze horse statue for the Duke of Milan. Michelangelo's furious response was both personal and professional, attacking not just Leonardo's artistic failures but his character.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Michelangelo's personality was his unlikely career as a forger early in his career. In 1496, he created a sleeping cupid figure and treated it with acidic earth to make it appear ancient, then sold it through a dealer to Cardinal Riario of San Giorgio as a genuine Roman antique. When the fraud was discovered, rather than prosecuting the young artist, the Cardinal was so impressed by Michelangelo's skill that he invited him to Rome. This incident launched Michelangelo's career and demonstrates the complex relationship between originality and imitation in Renaissance art. Far from being condemned, the forgery was seen as proof of extraordinary technical ability.

The statue of David, completed in 1504, provides numerous bizarre and revealing anecdotes about both the artist and his times. The marble block Michelangelo used had been rejected by other sculptors as flawed and unworkable, already bearing chisel marks from previous failed attempts. The block had earned the nickname the Giant even before Michelangelo began working on it, and creating a masterpiece from this discarded stone became a matter of personal and professional pride.

When the fourteen-foot statue was completed, its placement became intensely political. Unlike previous depictions of David standing triumphant over Goliath's severed head, Michelangelo chose to show the moment before the battle, with David's eyes fixed in a threatening glare toward Rome. This was no accident. Florence had recently overthrown the powerful Medici family, and David became a symbol of republican liberty and defiance against tyranny. The statue's intense gaze was deliberately positioned as a warning to Florence's enemies, particularly the Papal States.

The installation of David required forty strong men four days to move the statue just half a mile from Michelangelo's workshop to the Piazza della Signoria. The massive sculpture was suspended by ropes on a wooden scaffold, swaying gently as it was pulled and pushed along a series of tree trunks laid across the cobblestones. During this journey, supporters of the exiled Medici family threw stones at the statue, recognizing its political symbolism. The majority of Florentines, however, celebrated what they called Michelangelo's giant as a symbol of their hard-won independence.

One of the most touching aspects of Michelangelo's life was his profound friendship with Vittoria Colonna, a remarkable Renaissance woman who was both a gifted poet and a powerful political figure. Their relationship, which began around 1536 when Michelangelo was in his sixties, represented the only significant female friendship of his life. Colonna was a widow, a noblewoman, and a religious reformer whose intellectual and spiritual depth matched Michelangelo's own complexity.

Their correspondence reveals a relationship of extraordinary intimacy and mutual respect. Vittoria addressed him as unique master Michelangelo and my most particular friend, while he wrote numerous poems celebrating her wisdom and spiritual guidance. Michelangelo created special drawings as gifts for her, among the first drawings ever made as finished works of art rather than mere studies. When she died in 1547, he wrote of her using the masculine form of the word friend, suggesting he saw her as transcending conventional gender categories.

The depth of their connection is revealed in a letter Michelangelo wrote to his nephew in 1551: Vittoria had one hundred and three sonnets in parchment tied together, which she sent from Viterbo. He treasured these poetic messages throughout his life, keeping them as sacred relics of their friendship. Contemporary observers noted that Michelangelo was fascinated by what one called Colonna's hermaphroditic features, particularly her masculine intellect combined with feminine spiritual insight.

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Michelangelo's character was his relationship with his own fame. Unlike many artists who courted publicity, he was deeply ambivalent about recognition and went to great lengths to control his public image. The Pietà, completed when he was just twenty-four, provides a perfect example of this complex attitude toward fame. Shortly after its installation in St. Peter's Basilica, Michelangelo allegedly overheard visitors attributing the work to another sculptor. Enraged by this misattribution, he sneaked into the church at night and carved his name across Mary's sash, making it the only work he ever signed.

According to Vasari, Michelangelo later regretted this moment of pride and swore never to sign another work. This anecdote, whether entirely true or partially legendary, captures the artist's lifelong struggle between his desire for recognition and his belief that true art should speak for itself without need of attribution.

The story of Michelangelo's later years reveals a man haunted by unfulfilled ambitions and the weight of his own genius. He lived to the extraordinary age of eighty-eight, dying in 1564 just days before his eighty-ninth birthday. Throughout his final decades, he continued working with obsessive dedication, designing the dome of St. Peter's Basilica and creating his final sculptures. His last works show an increasing spiritual intensity, as if the man who had spent his life representing the human form in its most perfect state was finally turning inward toward divine mysteries.

Even in death, Michelangelo maintained his capacity to surprise and perplex. Despite his wealth and status, he died in relatively simple circumstances, surrounded only by a few close friends. His body was initially buried in Rome, but his nephew Leonardo arranged for the corpse to be smuggled back to Florence in a bale of cloth, fulfilling the artist's wish to be buried in his beloved native city.

The most remarkable thing about Michelangelo's legacy is how his personality, with all its contradictions and extremes, became inseparable from his artistic achievement. His bad temper, his filthy habits, his feuds and friendships, his moments of sublime inspiration and petty revenge all contributed to a legend that continues to fascinate five centuries after his death. He represented the Renaissance ideal of the universal genius while simultaneously embodying its shadow side of arrogance, obsession, and social dysfunction.

In the end, Michelangelo stands as perhaps history's most complete example of the artistic temperament in all its magnificent and terrible complexity. He created works of transcendent beauty while living in self-imposed squalor, expressed divine love while feuding with nearly everyone around him, and achieved immortal fame while remaining fundamentally uncomfortable with human society. His life reads like a cautionary tale about the price of genius, but also as a testament to the power of artistic vision to transform not just marble and pigment, but the very conception of what human beings can achieve when they refuse to accept conventional limitations.

The anecdotes and bizarre facts of Michelangelo's existence continue to emerge from historical research, each one adding another layer to our understanding of this extraordinary figure. Whether he was forging ancient sculptures, insulting popes, painting his enemies into hell, or creating works of breathtaking beauty, Michelangelo lived with an intensity and commitment that few human beings have ever matched. His story remains as compelling today as it was to his contemporaries, proof that true genius creates its own rules and its own reality, regardless of social conventions or personal consequences.