“Pieta” is one of many famous works by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564), depicting the image of the body of Jesus being held by his mother, Mary. Michelangelo both painted and sculpted during the renaissance with amazing accuracy and detail of the human figure. His work often emphasizes the slightly exaggerated posture of figures in order to communicate the emotions of various biblical scenes. Michelangelo chiefly worked with marble for his sculpting, having lived with a stone-cutter during his pre-teen years and his father owning a marble quarry. He grudgingly took up fresco-style painting when commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which took him four years to complete. He was actually originally commissioned to just paint the twelve apostles in the chapel, but opted for a much more complicated scheme which ended up including over 300 figures, essentially depicting the whole of the Catholic/Christian faith. Michelangelo is also famous for sculpting the statue of “David”.
This guy is the most amazing artist I have ever seen! Even his “rough” sketches of the human figure are astounding in their detail and accuracy. You can tell he definitely has a profound understanding of the human body, its muscle tone, bone structure, everything. Just look at his depiction of Pieta, I swear he made that fabric all wrinkly just so he could show off how insanely talented he was, fabric wrinkles are insanely hard to do accurately. I admire how real his work feels. This is cold, hard, chiseled marble we’re looking at, not actual people sitting there. I love how much feeling is shown through the stance and body language of the figures in his work. I rarely work with sculpting or oil paints, but I hope that my work this year will be even a tiny bit as successful at communicating emotionally through composition, posture, etc. as his is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo#Early_life
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/michelangelo/michelangelo.html
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