The making of Michelangelo

Michelangelo’s mother had died when he was still a child, and so he was sent to live with his nurse and her quarryman husband. Michelangelo used to run around in the quarry and sketch figures of charcoal on the whole pieces of marble, which he then carved. His father remarried and he was called back. But he used to escape to the quarry. Francesco Granacci, one of the apprentices of the prominent Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, saw the potential of Michelangelo and strongly urged him to join Ghirlandaio, which Michelangelo did. ‘Head of Brutus’ happens to be one of the most phenomenal creations of Michelangelo. When the structure was carved out, it was unanimously felt by Michelangelo and his fellow quarryman that it was already there. Michelangelo had only perfected it.

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Care to know the vandal who damaged Michelangelo’s Pieta?

Michelangelo’s Pieta is in St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. Pieta is the sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the lifeless body of Jesus on her lap. In 1499 Michelangelo carved Pieta when he was 24 years old, and it is the only one he ever signed. On 21 May 1972 Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian-born Australian Geologist, attacked it with a hammer shouting: ‘I am Jesus Christ!’ With several blows, he removed the Virgin’s arm at the elbow, knocked off a chunk of her nose, and chipped one of her eyelids.

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