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Michelangelo - 1534 Sistine Chapel - 02 Last Judgement
Identifier
024460
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Influences
As a young boy, in Florence, Michelangelo studied grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino, but the city of Florence was at that time the greatest centre of the arts and learning in Italy and Michelangelo was more interested in copying paintings from churches and seeking the company of painters, than he was in the other arts.
At this time, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican, in order 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 at that period. In 1488, at the age of 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio. This may be one reason why the Sistine chapel as a whole has such a unified appearance.
When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, de facto ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.
