Artist # 7 Michelangelo Buonarroti

While I was carving my soap for our midterm assignment I thought about Michelangelo. He believes that sculpture is the truest art form. You start with a block of something and carve away to reveal what is inside that block of marble, or in my case soap. I could understand where he comes from because I didn't really start with anything besides a small sketch on the outside of the soap and I just carved and chipped away at it until it made something. One thing I can't understand or comprehend is how he could do what he did with marble. Soap is soft and easy, marble is hard and i'm sure very difficult to work with.


One of the most famous sculptures of all time is Michelangelo's David. He created this using marble. He stands in cantropasto waiting for Goliath. He is pondering throwing that first stone. The sculpture is made larger than life because it was meant to be higher up so when you looked at it, it would look normal size. The detail of Michelangelo's work is pretty amazing. Especially in his ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.


I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Sistine Chapel and see it. It's crazy how much detail there is on the ceiling and how big it is. It scared me looking up at it and imagining painting it. To me, it's crazy, but it came out to be amazing. Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint this ceiling to try and get Rome back to it's former glory. It took him over four years to finish it. I get sick of a drawing after a day, I can't imagine spending over four years on something.

Here are a few other pictures of his work from Google images.

The famous creation of Adam, and then Moses. Moses was to be apart of Pope Julius II's tomb, but he died and interrupted the commission and so Michelangelo couldn't finish all the other pieces to go with it and the placement of it changed. It is still one of his great pieces, even without the other pieces.


Michelangelo's talent is very evident in his work. We are still looking at his pieces and studying his work, and so I think that proves right there that his work was great.