6 Of The Greatest Artists Of All Time

Michelangelo Buonarrotti -The Man behind the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

An Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, poet, and architect – those are the reasons why Michelangelo Buonarrotti is one of the best artists of all time.

Michelangelo Buonarrotti got his formal education from Bertoldo di Giovanni, a sculptor, and Domenico Ghirlandaio, a painter. His knowledge in Classical antiquity, which he got in Florence, greatly influenced his works. Buonarrotti was able to meet some of the best scientists of his generation because of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

He transferred to Rome in 1496. The first assignments that he received involved the making of St. Peter’s basilica’s sculpture called “Pieta”. He also created other masterpieces back in Florence, like “David”, which you could see in Academia.

From 1508 to 1512, Buonarrotti was commissioned by Pope Julius II to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with frescoes that showed sibyls, scenes from the book of Genesis, and prophets. This specific work of Buonarrotti showed his preference for figures that are muscular and strong. He lay low with painting until 1536, when he began painting the “Last Judgment” on the Sistine Chapel’s back wall.

This famous artist died in 1564 in Rome and was buried in Florence.

Andy Warhol – Short Biography

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola 1928. Born to Slovak immigrants, he was reared in a working class suburb of Pittsburgh. From an early age, Warhol showed an interest in photography and drawing, attending free classes at Carnegie Institute. The only member of his family to attend college, he entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Melon University) in 1945, where he majored in pictorial design. Upon graduation, Warhol moved to New York with fellow student Philip Pearlstein. He found steady work as a commercial artist working as an illustrator for several magazines including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and The New Yorker.

Throughout the nineteen fifties Warhol enjoyed a successful career as an artist, winning several commendations from Art Directors Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. During this period, he shortened his name to “Warhol.” In 1952, the artist had his first solo exhibition at the gallery Hugo, showing Fifteen drawings based on Scripture Truman Capote.

In 1970, Warhol renewed his focus on painting and worked on commissioned basis both for corporations and for individuals whose portrait he wrote. Works created in this decade include the skull, Hammer and Sickles, Torsos IAOS and shadows. Warhol also published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and back again). Firmly established as a major 20th-century artist and international celebrity, Warhol made a major retrospective of his work at the Pasadena Museum of Art who went to museums around the world. In the late seventies, Warhol began dictating oral diary to his colleague, Pat Hackett, which became the basis for the best-selling Andy Warhol Diaries.

Warhol began to work in television, Andy Warhol, a series and a half hour video programs on the model of an interview. In 1985, “Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes,” has appeared on MTV, half hour programs featuring celebrities, artists, musicians and designers, with Warhol as a host. Paintings he created during this period included the dollar signs, guns and the last supper. He also produced several paintings in collaboration with other artists, including Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente.