As part of the Art’s Alive program in Mrs. Brook’s third grade class, the children were
introduced to the artwork of Michelangelo. The class project was to paint on a piece of thick
white paper with pastel paints and a paint brush. What was unique was the fact that the white
paper was taped beneath each student’s desk, and the artists laid on their back while painting.
As you can imagine it was somewhat messy, but the class happens to have many great helpers,
and clean-up was quick following the project!
Following is some of the information presented on Friday to the children. It was taken from
Michelangelo, written and illustrated by Mike Venezia, and Art Classics: Michelangelo, written
and edited by Claudio Gamba and Eugenio Battisti.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564
Best known for his interpretation of Genesis, or the creation of the world, painted in fresco on
the plaster ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at St. Peter’s Square in Rome, Italy, Michelangelo was a
prolific artist, working as a sculptor, poet, painter and architect until his death at ninety years
old.
Michelangelo came from a family of prominence, as his father was a magistrate, or judge.
At the age of thirteen Michelangelo was apprenticed to a painter named, Ghirlandaio, from
whom he learned mural painting. After a one year apprenticeship Michelangelo was invited by
Lorenzo De’Medici, ruler of Florence, Italy to study at the school of sculpture he had founded
in the Palace Gardens. When Michelangelo was seventeen, his patron, Lorenzo De’Medici died
and Michelangelo worked independently for the rulers and clergy in Florence, Bologna and
Rome.
Michelangelo was just 24 years old when his sculpture, the Pieta of the Madonna and Jesus,
made him famous. The Pieta is housed at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, in Rome, Italy.
The sculpture depicts the body of Jesus following his crucifixion and is unique in its artistic
interpretation. Michelangelo shows a young and beautiful Mary holding her son as a mother
would hold an infant. The body of Jesus, a grown man is much smaller in scale then his mother,
despite Jesus being a grown man at the time of his death. The work combines naturalism and
the renaissance ideal of classical beauty. The scale effectively displays the emotion of the loss
of a child any mother would feel.
Thank you,
Annie Connolly Saganic
It looks FUN