Michelangelo explained to kids

Michelangelo was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo. His full name was Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. He was the second of five sons of Lodovico Buonarroti, a Florentine legal official, and Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The family lived outside the city walls, near the church of San Domenico. Michelangelo's father intended for him to have a career in business, but Michelangelo showed an early interest in art and was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, the leading Florentine painter of his day, at the age of thirteen. At the age of fourteen, Michelangelo was admitted to the sculpture school of the Medici-supported Guild of St Luke, where he studied under Bertoldo di Giovanni. He was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio for a time. Michelangelo's earliest known work is a relief carving of the Holy Family and the young Saint John done at this time. In 1492, when Lorenzo de' Medici, the de facto ruler of Florence, died, Michelangelo left the city rather than join a political faction. He settled in Bologna for a time, where he worked on a number of sculptures. He also visited Rome, where he was greatly impressed by the ancient ruins. After returning to Florence in 1495, he modeled the life-size David in clay. At the age of twenty-six, Michelangelo was commissioned to carve the Pietà, one of his most famous works. It is a marble statue of the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of her dead son, Jesus. Michelangelo finished the Pietà when he was only twenty-nine years old. In 1504, Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II to design his tomb, which was to include forty statues. Julius II died in 1513, before the tomb was completed. In 1534, Michelangelo was appointed chief architect of St. Peter's Basilica by Pope Clement VII. He worked on the project off and on for the next forty years. Michelangelo died on 18 February 1564, at the age of eighty-nine, in Rome.