Michelangelo Buonarroti

Michelangelo Buonarroti (born in Caprese, near Arezzo, in 1475; died in Rome in 1564) was trained in Florence and was by 1493 or 1494 active as an independent sculptor, painter, and architect. He created highly influential works in quick succession, some unfinished, among them the sculpture 'David' (1504), the ceiling frescoes in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, the planning of the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence and St Peter's in Rome. His monumental figural style, picturing man in self-determined idealised form, would have a lasting influence on the art of the sixteenth century.