Red Bank Catholic High School - Emerald Yearbook (Red Bank, NJ)

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In the beginning Gocl created heaven and earth

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MICHELANGELO ,THE MAN . . Michelangelo Buonarroti the Furious Genius son of a local ma is- - i Q trate, was born in the year i475 in the village of Caprese near Tuscany, Italy. He was a rather moody country boy who abhorred the routine of the small Florentine grammar school he attended. The only thing he liked to do was draw. He would sneak away from classes to draw on walls around the city. Many of his teachers thought him to be an incorrigilble youth- hardly a geniusg others, however, realized in his minute and meticulous drawings an unusual talent. By l49O the spirit of the Renaissance was flourishing under the patron- age of Prince Lorenzo di Medici. Michelangelo, then fifteen years old, was astonishing the masters of Florence with his ability. He was taken into the palace of the Prince, where for two years he explored the art of sculpture. Michelangelo's good fortune aroused the jealousy of his classmates so much that one of them smashed his nose, giving him a savage expression which marked him for the rest of his life. lt is said that his expression mirrored the impetuous bodies he created. At the age of twenty-nine, having com- pleted the magnificent statue David for the city of Florence, Michelangelo found himself the most renowned sculptor in Italy. For most of his life Michelangelo worked in Rome under the Popes, the most lavish patrons of the time, but he quarreled bitterly with them as he did with almost everyone he knew. Sensitive and impatient, he repeatedly flew into fits of stubborn fury. Pope Julius ll literally had to force him to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The first contract for the decoration of the Chapel was drawn up May lO, l508. ln putting his name to it, the great master signed himself a sculptor to emphasize the pain it caused him to cease the work which was his first love. The talents of the impassioned genius extended far beyond the arts of painting and sculpture. He was also an architect and designed some of the most famous edifices in Italy, among them the soaring dome of Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome. He lent his prestige to literature by writing philosophical poems to his one human love, Victoria Colonna, revealing to the world some of the inner workings of this mysterious man. ' All the glories of Renaissance culture, both glitteringly secular and deeply spiritual, culminated in his work, which poured forth unchecked during a prodigious lifetime of 89 years. ln the winter of i564 Michelangelo ended a life of stormy creation. With his last words he willed his possessions to his relatives, his body to the earth, and his soul to God. Whether as a painter,, sculptor, or architect, Michelangelo Buonarroti succeeded in uniting mag-' nificence of plan and endless variety with the utmost simplicity and depth. Day by day new visions came to fill Michelangelo's great mind. He spent four and a half years enraptured in superhuman ecstacy and peopling his fantasy with three hundred forty-three colossal figures. if The Sistine Chapel reveals the full sweep of Michelangelo's genius, and the Creative Love of God the Father, which he, Michelangelo Buonarroti, brought to life in noble mien and magnificent proportion.