Michelangelo

I was born in Caprese, but my life was forged in Florence. In Lorenzo de’ Medici’s garden I learned from antique stone that disegno governs all — thought before hand, line before mass. To know the body I opened it; bone and sinew taught me truth better than flattering chalk.

In Rome I carved the Pietà, and when a bystander gave it to another’s name, I cut my own upon the sash — the only time. In Florence I took up the weathered Giant and found David within, not by adding but by taking away. They set him before the Palazzo della Signoria, guardian and measure.

Julius II bound me to his tomb; its changes and quarrels shadowed decades. Yet he drove me up the scaffold of the Sistine, where, unwilling painter, I set prophets and sibyls around the first days of the world. Years later I returned for the Last Judgment, when Christendom trembled; the forms darkened and the air grew stern.

In San Lorenzo I shaped the Medici tombs and a library that steps down like a living thing. During the siege of 1529 I drew bastions for my Florence. In age I took St Peter’s from confusion toward clarity, simplifying plan and girding it for a great dome. I wrote sonnets to friends on love, grace, and labor. Marble resists, but resistance is prayer.