Who they were
Born at Caprese in Tuscany in 1475 and raised in Florence, he was apprenticed at thirteen to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio and within a year had moved into the Medici household, learning to carve in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s sculpture garden. He worked for seven popes over a career of some seventy years, moving between Florence and Rome as their politics required, and wrote around three hundred poems alongside the sculpture he always called his real trade. He died in Rome in 1564, three weeks short of eighty-nine.
What they did
He carved the David and the Pietà, painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and later its Last Judgment, and in old age served as architect of St. Peter’s Basilica, designing its dome.
Legacy
Regarded in his lifetime as divine — Il Divino — he set an enduring standard for Western art and shaped the course of sculpture, painting, and architecture.