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Michelangelo Buonarroti: Florence
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Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6, 1475 in the village of Caprese, Italy. He was one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance, a period when the arts and sciences flourished. Michelangelo became an apprentice to prominent Florentine painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio at the age of 12, but soon began to study sculpture instead. He attracted the attention and patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, who was ruler of Florence until 1492.
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Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in the small village of Caprese and grew up in Florence. Florence was the artistic center of the early Renaissance, a period of outstanding artistic innovation and accomplishment that began in the early 1400s. In many ways the masterpieces that surrounded Michelangelo were his best teachers-ancient Greek and Roman statuary, and the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of early Renaissance masters Masaccio, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, and Filippo Brunelleschi. As a child he preferred drawing to his schoolwork, despite his father's stern disapproval.
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Some of the greatest works by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) are to be found in Florence: drawings, sculpture, paintings, architecture. This great renaissance artist studied the works of Masaccio and Brunelleschi, and received his training in the workshops of Ghirlandaio and Bertoldo. He worked in Florence, Siena, Bologna, Lunigiana and especially in Rome, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. His tomb in Santa Croce, Florence, is by Giorgio Vasari.
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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on March 6, 1475. His birthplace, Caprese, Italy, was a tiny village that belonged to the nearby city-state of Florence. His father was the mayor of the village. The boy was the second of five brothers. He went to school in Florence, but his mind was on art, not on his studies.
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Michelangelo proudly declared that his family had paid taxes in Florence for three hundred years, thereby placing them among an elite group of "good families." The Buonarroti traced their citizenship back to the priorate of 1343, and in 1508 they had six members eligible for election to the Florentine government. But even more than the prestige of public office, wealth was the most certain measure of status, and property was the principal measure of wealth. Shortly after his commission to design the tomb of Pope Julius II (1505), Michelangelo began purchasing property in and around Florence. In addition to rental income, these various farm properties provided Michelangelo and his family with most of their basic needs, including grain, oil, wine, eggs, and firewood. By his death at the age of eighty-nine, Michelangelo was a millionaire; ... despite his affluence, he lived modestly, for he was, like his contemporaries, perpetually wary of gossip.
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In 1506 Michelangelo purchased the first of many pieces of property that would help secure both his and his family's financial future. In the rolling hills south nf Florence. he acquired a large farm from which he obtained most of his staples, including wood, grain, olives, and grapes. In 1507 he added a piece of property to the family homestead in Settignano, and the following year he bought the houses on Via Ghibellina that were refurbished into the Casa Buonarroti. Although Michelangelo never lived there, members of his family did, and most importantly, the purchase and renovation conferred honor on the Buonarroti, who now had an imposing house in the city. Thus, by 1508, Michelangelo had become a prosperous property owner and had established a pattern that repeated itself throughout his career: with each new commission, Michelangelo invested in additional properties in and around Florence.
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