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05/03/2025
I am Michelangelo, and this is the story of my life.
I was born in Caprese in 1475, but don’t call me “da Caprese.” I am, and always will be, a Florentine.
That’s where my soul belongs, where my hands first touched marble, and where I became the artist the world now knows.
But let’s be clear—this life of mine was no easy path. Genius, if you want to call it that, is a curse as much as a gift.
I was never meant to be an artist, at least not in my father’s eyes.
Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarroti thought manual work was beneath our family, but I had no interest in becoming a bureaucrat or a merchant.
I wanted to carve, to shape stone into something living. Against his wishes, I became an apprentice under Ghirlandaio.
I learned the basics—painting frescoes, preparing pigments—but my heart was elsewhere.
It was in the Medici gardens, where I studied ancient statues and carved my own. That’s where Lorenzo de’ Medici noticed me, and that’s how I ended up in the heart of Florence’s power.
I was never easy to deal with. Not then, not ever.
I worked alone, always fighting with someone—the Pope, my patrons, even the very stone I carved.
I barely ate, rarely bathed, and never wasted time on comfort. People said I lived like a beggar, but what did I care? My mind was full of sculptures yet to be freed from marble.
Take the Sistine Chapel, for example. I never wanted to paint it—I was a sculptor!
But Julius II, a bull of a man who didn’t take no for an answer, forced me into it.
I spent four years on my back, covered in paint, my neck twisted, my hands cramped. And after all that? They called it a masterpiece.
I wasn’t the easiest man to get along with, especially if your name was Leonardo da Vinci.
We couldn’t stand each other. Once, in Florence, some men asked Leonardo about Dante’s Inferno, and before he could answer, I cut in, mocking him for never finishing his works.
He sneered at me, I insulted him back, and we both walked away fuming.
And don’t even get me started on Raphael. That young peacock had charm, but he was a schemer.
While I was breaking my back on the Sistine ceiling, he was cozying up to the Pope, whispering in his ear, trying to turn him against me. I never trusted him.
People say I was miserable, but that’s not true. I just didn’t waste time.
I slept in my boots, ate little more than bread and wine, and worked until my hands bled. I believed marble had a soul trapped inside, and my job was to set it free.
I didn’t need wealth or luxury—though I had plenty of both—I just needed stone, chisels, and silence.
I made La Pietà before I was thirty, but I was so unknown at the time that I had to sneak into St. Peter’s one night and carve my name across Mary’s sash so no one else would take credit.
I regretted that later. Vanity didn’t suit me.
David? That block of marble was ruined before I touched it—two other sculptors had given up on it. But I saw what they couldn’t. I carved him, standing tall, defiant, every muscle tense. Florence saw him as a symbol of their own spirit, and so did I.
I lived long, too long, some might say. My body grew old, but my mind never stopped.
Even in Rome, in my last years, I still carved, still sketched, still dreamed of unfinished works.
My final piece, the Rondanini Pietà, was meant to be my last masterpiece, but my hands were weak, and I never completed it.
I died in 1564, far from Florence, but my heart never left. They took my body back to my city, where I belonged, where my David still stands, defiant, unbroken.
I was Michelangelo Buonarroti. A stubborn, restless, tormented soul. A sculptor before all else. And this was my life.
