Michelangelo

It's the birthday of Michelangelo Buonarroti, (books by this author) born in a little village in Tuscany called Caprese, 1475. He was the most famous artist in his lifetime, and in fact he was one of the first artists ever to become famous. Before Michelangelo, artists were considered mere craftsmen, and they did their work anonymously.
Michelangelo became a favorite of Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence, and that gave him access to the Medici art collection, full of ancient Roman statues. Unlike most artists of his era, Michelangelo didn't like to use a lot of assistants, and this meant that he left a lot of his projects unfinished. In fact, he almost gave up on painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, after just a few weeks of work, because his plaster kept growing mold. It was a local architect who pointed out that Michelangelo was using too much water in his plaster mix.
Many sculptors built their works from separately sculpted pieces, but Michelangelo preferred to chisel his sculptures out of single blocks, which made his work extremely difficult, because he could make no mistakes. The block of marble he used to sculpt his statue of David was 40 feet tall.