Michelangelo: "Genius is eternal patience."

Today in History:

February 18,1564 The artist Michelangelo died in Rome.

What most know of him is that in his architectural works Michelangelo defied the conventions of his time,that he showed mastery of the human figure in painting as well, that his art work displayed an unparallelled force and majestic style.


As such, he is known to us as one of the greatest artists of all time, a man whose name has become synonymous with the word "masterpiece".

As an artist he was unmatched, the creator of works of sublime beauty that express the full breadth of the human condition. as noted by Michelangelo Buonarroti


What many do not know is the torturous and troubled youth he struggled through.
"Buonarroti's mother, was too sick and frail to nurse Michelangelo, so he was placed with a wet nurse, in a family of stone cutters, where he, "sucked in the craft of hammer and chisel with my foster mother's milk. When I told my father that I wish to be an artist, he flew into a rage, 'artists are laborers, no better than shoemakers."

Buonarroti's mother died young, when he was but six years old. But even before then, Michelangelo's childhood had been grim and lacking in affection."Touchy and quick to respond with fierce words, he tended to keep to himself, out of shyness according to some but also, according to others, a lack of trust in his fellows."


"Michelangelo's "unsociableness" has been seen as the typical attitude of what was known in the Renaissance as the vir melanchonicus, or the absorbed and solitary contemplator, wholly wrapped up in his art, for whom involvement in creative activity was transformed into suffering: "I am here in great distress and with great physical strain, and have no friends of any kind, nor do I want them; and I do not have enough time to eat as much as I need; my joy and my sorrow/my repose are these discomforts."

Michelangelo was perhaps one of the artists who paid the greatest price in terms of suffering for the divine gift of his art: "I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible" (January 29th, 1542).

And through and despite his sorrow he bequeathed us "the David",the ceiling and rear wall of the "Sistine Chapel","the Pietà", and "Saint Peter's Basilica's" famous dome.Works so magnificent, they appear to me beyond even imaginative capabilities.

For those still full of aspirations - may I share some of his words:

On Faith:
Faith in one's self... is the best and safest course.
On Art:
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
On Belief:
The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we hit it.