Michelangelo

Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was an Italian Renaissance philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the famous Oration on the Dignity of... Man , which has been called the "Manifesto of the Renaissance", and a key text of Renaissance humanism and of what has been called the “Hermetic Reformation." Giovanni was born at Mirandola, near Modena, the youngest son of Francesco I, Lord of Mirandola and Count of Concordia , by his wife Giulia, daughter of Feltrino Boiardo, Count di Scandiano. The family had long dwelt in the Castle of Mirandola , which had become independent in the fourteenth century and had received in 1414 from the Emperor Sigismund the fief of Concordia. Mirandola was a small autonomous county in Emilia, near Ferrara. The Pico della Mirandola were closely related to the Sforza, Gonzaga and Este dynasties, and Giovanni's siblings wed the scions of the hereditary rulers of Corsica, Ferrara, Bologna and Forlì.
more

Girolamo Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar, a Scholastic, and an influential contributor to the politics of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498. He was known for his book burning, destruction of what he considered immoral art, and what he thought the Renaissance—which... began in his Florence—ought to become. He preached vehemently against the moral corruption of much of the clergy at the time. His main opponent was Rodrigo Borgia, who was Pope Alexander VI from 1492, through Savonarola's death in 1498. Savonarola was born in Ferrara, the capital of an independent Duchy in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy. According to another source, he was born at Occhiobello, 7 km from Ferrara. He was born into a respected and affluent family that had originally resided in Padua and had spent most of his time in his hometown. In his youth he studied the Bible, St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. Savonarola initially studied at the University of Ferrara, where he appears to have taken an advanced Arts degree.
more

Domenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. Among his many apprentices was Michelangelo. Ghirlandaio's full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. The occupation of his father Tommaso Bigordi and his uncle Antonio in 1451 was given as... "'setaiuolo a minuto,' that is, dealers of silks and related objects in small quantities." He was the eldest of six children born to Tommaso Bigordi by his first wife Mona Antonia; of these, only Domenico and his brothers and collaborators Davide and Benedetto survived childhood. Tommaso had two more children by his second wife, also named Antonia, whom he married in 1464. Domenico's half-sister Alessandra married the painter Bastiano Mainardi in 1494. Domenico was at first apprenticed to a jeweller or a goldsmith, most likely his own father. The nickname "Il Ghirlandaio" came to Domenico from his father, a goldsmith who was famed for creating the metallic garland-like necklaces worn by Florentine women.
more

Melozzo da Forlì was an Italian Renaissance painter and architect. His fresco paintings are notable for the use of foreshortening. He was the most important member of the Forlì painting school. Melozzo was supposedly from a wealthy family named Ambrosi from Forlì. Nothing is known... about his early years. It is only a hypothesis that he was formed by the Forlivese school of art, then dominated by Ansuino da Forlì; both were influenced by Andrea Mantegna. It has been said, also without confirmation, that he became a journeyman and color-grinder to master painters. His presence was first mentioned in his birthplace in 1460 and again in 1464. Around this period, and together with Antoniazzo Romano, he painted frescoes in the Bessarione chapel in the basilica dei Santi Apostoli in Rome. Melozzo then moved to Urbino, probably between 1465 and 1475. There he met Piero della Francesca, who profoundly influenced Melozzo's style and use of perspective. He would have also studied architecture by Bramante and the work of Flemish painters then working for duke Federico da Montefeltro.
more

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and... Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop, and despite his death at 37, a large body of his work remains. Many of his works are found in the Apostolic Palace of The Vatican, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was self-designed, but for the most part executed by the workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking.
more

Donato Bramante was an Italian architect, who introduced the Early Renaissance style to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rome, where his most famous design was St. Peter's Basilica. Bramante was born in Monte Asdrualdo , under name Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio, near Urbino: here, in 1467... Luciano Laurana was adding to the Palazzo Ducale an arcaded courtyard and other features that seemed to have the true ring of a reborn antiquity to Federico da Montefeltro's ducal palace. Bramante's architecture has eclipsed his painting skills: he knew the painters Melozzo da Forlì and Piero della Francesca well, who were interested in the rules of perspective and illusionistic features in Mantegna's painting. Around 1474, Bramante moved to Milan, a city with a deep Gothic architectural tradition, and built several churches in the new Antique style. The Duke, Ludovico Sforza, made him virtually his court architect, beginning in 1476, with commissions that culminated in the famous trompe-l'oeil choir of the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro .
more