Michelangelo

A tortured, suffering soul, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) funneled his God-fearing passion into the creation of some of the most revered and celebrated works in the history of art. Attempting to reconcile the apparently conflicting forces that inhabited him: earthly passions and fear of God. The edifice devoted to beauty, celestial and infernal alike, that Michelangelo raised to the glory of God has no equivalent. His predecessors aspired to Heaven through faith alone; Michelangelo sought to rise through the contemplative exaltation of beauty.