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Throughout his long life, Michelangelo Buonarroti was plagued by deadlines and a sense of lost freedom. He could never escape his employers. One pope thrashed him with a stick to try and speed up the Sistine Chapel. Another, refusing his bid for more time, sneered that he should learn to paint with his toes as well as his fingers. Compared with Leonardo's abysmal catalogue of false starts, a massive body of work remains. But Michelangelo was haunted by projects unfinished or never begun - a vast equestrian monument, a statue bigger than David, the Laurentine Library, the Medici Chapel. To...

Compare the look on Sen. Dianne Feinstein's face during Judge Aleto's hearings to one of the sinners in Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel fresco "The Blessed and the Damned of the Last Judgment."

In this third “class” of this second Art Appreciation series, we’ll examine the various styles of the Renaissance. The Renaissance in Italy is the most varied and the most famous, but there is also a Renaissance in northern Europe, with the works of Bosch, Durer and Brueghel. (If you want to see the other lectures of this series to which I refer here, check on my name below to get to my homepage for clickable links to those very lectures.) Renaissance means “rebirth” of classical Greek and Roman realism, grace, and dignity. If you remember back to lesson two of...

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Two Brazilian doctors and amateur art lovers believe they have uncovered a secret lesson on human anatomy hidden by Renaissance artist Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. Completed nearly 500 years ago, the brightly colored frescoes painted on the Vatican's famous sanctuary are considered some of the world's greatest works of art. They depict Biblical scenes such as the "Creation of Adam" in which God reaches out to touch Adam's finger. But Gilson Barreto and Marcelo de Oliveira believe Michelangelo also scattered his detailed knowledge of internal anatomy across 34 of the ceiling's 38 panels....

A scholar has suggested that "Laocoön," a fabled sculpture whose unearthing in 1506 has deeply influenced thinking about the ancient Greeks and the nature of the visual arts, may well be a Renaissance forgery - possibly by Michelangelo himself. Her contention has stirred some excitement and considerable exasperation among art historians in the Classical and Renaissance fields. Many other challenges to accepted attributions have faded quickly into oblivion. The scholar advancing the theory, Lynn Catterson, a summer lecturer in art history at Columbia University, presented her argument in a talk at the university's Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America...

March 18, 2005 — A unique bas-relief, which might be the first known self-portrait of Michelangelo, has emerged from a private collection, art historians announced in Florence this week. The sculpture, a white marble round work attached to a flat piece of marble, with a diameter of 14 inches depicting a bearded man, was lent by a noble Tuscan family to the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci for a study on the relationship between Michelangelo and Leonardo. "The work speaks for itself: it is a very high-quality sculpture which depicts Michelangelo. The skilled chiselling on the back...

Jan. 7, 2005 — Michelangelo's David could soon be enveloped in invisible jets of air to protect it from dust and humidity tracked in by streams of sweaty tourists, the custodians of the Renaissance masterpiece in Florence announced. Experts at Florence's Galleria dell'Accademia, where the 500-year-old naked marble man attracts 1.2 million visitors a year, found that the statue was covered with grime just months after it was cleaned with a controversial "wet" technique that used distilled water. "We discovered that the David needs dusting often, every two months during the summer. Tourists bring a large, damaging quantity of dirt...

This September 8 marks the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo’s “David,” one of art-history’s greatest masterpieces. Crowds of visitors have been drawn to Florence to experience this magnificent sculpture over the past 500 years--and they continue to visit in record numbers. Why does a work of art created half a millennium ago possess such a timeless, universal appeal? What meaning does this 500-year-old sculpture hold for modern-day man? To answer these questions, consider the significance of Michelangelo’s “David” to the Renaissance Florentines who first revered it. During the 1000 years preceding the Renaissance, the West had been mired in the medieval...

One of the major discoveries of the Italian Renaissance, this sculptural grouping was found in Rome in 1506 in the ruins of Titus' palace. It depicts an event in Vergil's Aeneid (Book 2). The Trojan priest Laocoön was strangled by sea snakes, sent by the gods who favored the Greeks, while he was sacrificing at the altar of Neptune. Because Laocoön had tried to warn the Trojan citizens of the danger of bringing in the wooden horse, he incurred the wrath of the gods.

Medici Project Turns Up Mystery Bodies By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery NewsGrand Duke Cosimo I July 21, 2004 — The project to exhume the remains of several members of the Medicis, the family that dominated the Florentine Renaissance, has taken a new turn this month as researchers discovered a secret crypt containing the mysterious bodies of seven children and an adult. The vaulted chamber was found under a stone floor behind the main altar of the Medici Chapels at Michelangelo's church of San Lorenzo in Florence. The researchers stumbled across it while searching for the final resting place of the last...

LONDON (AFP) - Renaissance-era artistic genius Michelangelo might have had Asperger's syndrome, a milder form of autism which causes sufferers to have difficulties with social interaction, according to experts on the condition. A by-product of Asperger's -- also known as high-functioning autism -- can be a special talent in a particular area such as art, music or mathematics. The research by a British and Irish expert in autism, published in British publication the Journal of Medical Biography, argues that Michelangelo met a number of the criteria for Asperger's. "Michelangelo was aloof and a loner," said Dr Muhammad Arshad, a psychiatrist...

Late-nite idea scribbled on Post-It note, found this morning: QYR I STR8T GUY MICHELANG And for once I knew what that meant. I had seen some “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and in my bleary pre-crash state thought: wouldn’t it make a great column to put famous historical gays on that show? Like Alexander the Great? Or Michelagelo? In retrospect, no. As a friend keeps reminding me, there’s no proof Michelangelo was gay. (Uh-huh. Sure.) But I still like the idea, if only for the contrast. I always Michelangelo as a Beethovian character - dark, scowly, bothered, the antithesis...

NEW YORK, Jul 09, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- A chalk and wash drawing found in a box in a New York City design museum is a work by Michelangelo worth more than $10 million, museum officials said Tuesday. The drawing of a candelabrum is about 500 years old and in pristine condition. It has been unanimously authenticated by Italian Renaissance art scholars and is one of fewer than 10 Michelangelos known to be in the United States, according to Paul Thompson, director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The 17-by-10-inch drawing on cream-colored paper was made using...