Today in Arts Alive, students learned about Michaelangelo. Michaelangelo was born in 1475. As an artist, he was multi-talented—he sculpted, painted, designed buildings and even wrote poetry. His favorite type of art was creating sculptures. He spent a great deal of time studying nature and science so that his figures and scenes would be a life-like as possible.
In 1508, Michaelangelo began work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Pope Julius II originally wanted Michaelangelo to create statues for him, but changed his mind and asked him to paint the Sistine Chapel. Michaelangelo didn’t want to, but it is difficult to say no to the Pope!
He spent 4 years on this project. It is a fresco-style of painting, meaning he painted on wet plaster—the paint then becomes a part of the plaster and won’t flake off. Michaelangelo spent much of this time painting while on his back, on scaffolds attached to the walls. This is one of Michaelangelo’s most famous works and shows figures and the scenes from the Bible in a very realistic way.
In Arts Alive today students were asked to paint a realistic scene of their favorite moment from 3rd grade. The tricky part was that their paper was taped to the underside of their desk, so that they had to work in the uncomfortable way that Michaelangelo had to work to complete the Sistine Chapel! Check out some of the photos, and a big Thank-You to Kerri Evans who did a great job presenting this lesson today!
this is OUTSTANDING.
(totally on my growing list of “things to do”)
thanks for this 🙂