Early life, 1475–1488
Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475[a] in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina,[6] near Arezzo, Tuscany.[7] For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence; but the bank failed, and his father, Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, briefly took a government post in Caprese, where Michelangelo was born.[1] At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the town's Judicial administratorand podestà or local administrator of Chiusi della Verna. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena.[8] The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa—a claim that remains unproven, but which Michelangelo believed.[9]
Several months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where he was raised. During his mother's later prolonged illness, and after her death in 1481 (when he was six years old), Michelangelo lived with a nanny and her husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm.[8] There he gained his love for marble. As Giorgio Vasariquotes him:
"If there is some good in me, it is because I was born in the subtle atmosphere of your country of Arezzo. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures."[7]
Apprenticeships, 1488–1492
As a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino.[7][10][b]However, he showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters.[10]
The city of Florence was at that time Italy's greatest centre of the arts and learning.[11] Art was sponsored by the Signoria (the town council), the merchant guilds, and wealthy patrons such as the Medici and their banking associates.[12] The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence.[11] In the early 15th century, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, having studied the remains of Classical buildings in Rome, had created two churches, San Lorenzo's and Santo Spirito, which embodied the Classical precepts.[13] The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for fifty years to create the bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as "The Gates of Paradise".[14] The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichelecontained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence: Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco.[12] The interiors of the older churches were covered with frescos (mostly in Late Medieval, but also in the Early Renaissance style), begun by Giotto and continued by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, both of whose works Michelangelo studied and copied in drawings.[15]
During Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence.[12]In 1488, at age 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio.[16] The next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo as an artist, which was rare for someone of fourteen.[17] When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, de facto ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.[18]