Rosso Fiorentino | Musician Angel, 1522

Playing putto / Musical Angel is a fragment of a lost altarpiece which probably depicted the Madonna and Child with Saints.

This little work belonging to the period of maturity of the artist.

In 1605 the picture was collocated in the Tribune beside the more precious masterworks Medici family had collected.

Recent studies revealed the panel to be a fragment of a larger painting including - such as other altarpieces by Rosso - the angel in the lower part of the scene.

Michelangelo Buonarroti | Life and Sculptures

Michelangelo, in full Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (born March 6, 1475, Caprese, Republic of Florence [Italy]-died February 18, 1564, Rome, Papal States) Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect and poet who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.

Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time.

A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence.

Michelangelo | San Giovannino di Ubeda, 1495-1496

The biographies of Michelangelo by Vasari (1550) and Condivi (1553) recount that following the artist’s return to Florence from Bologna in 1495, his first commission was for a marble sculpture of a “San Giovannino” for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’Medici (cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent), now identified as the present work. Rather than following the model of Donatello’s Saint John the Baptist (Florence, Museo del Bargello) as other Florentine sculptors had done, Michelangelo depicted the Baptist as much younger, no more than a boy of six or seven.

Michelangelo | Pietà for Vittoria Colonna, 1538-44

"The Pietà for Vittoria Colonna" is a black chalk drawing on cardboard (28.9×18.9 cm) by Michelangelo Buonarroti, dated to about 1538-44 and kept at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

History

Michelangelo became acquainted with Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547, marchioness of Pescara, was an Italian noblewoman and poet) around 1538.

Their lively friendship gained Michelangelo admission to her social circles, and he became acquainted with issues of church reform.

For Colonna, Michelangelo executed several paintings in the fifth decade of the sixteenth century.

All of them are now lost or of controversial attribution, but several sketches and copies by students and admirers of Michelangelo have been preserved.

Apart from a famous Crucifixion, Michelangelo's most notable work for Vittoria Colonna is a Pietà, of which a remarkable drawing is exhibited at Boston.

Giorgio Vasari racconta Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1550

Mentre gli industriosi et egregii spiriti col lume del famosissimo Giotto e de gli altri seguaci suoi si sforzavano dar saggio al mondo de ’l valore che la benignità delle stelle e la proporzionata mistione degli umori aveva dato a gli ingegni loro e, desiderosi di imitare con la eccellenzia della arte la grandezza della natura, per venire il piú che e’ potevano a quella somma cognizione che molti chiamano intelligenzia, universalmente, ancora che indarno si affaticavano, il benignissimo Rettor del Cielo volse clemente gli occhi a la terra e, veduta la vana infinità di tante fatiche, gli ardentissimi studii senza alcun frutto e la opinione prosuntuosa degli uomini, assai piú lontana da ’l vero che le tenebre da la luce, per cavarci di tanti errori si dispose mandare in terra uno spirito, che universalmente in ciascheduna arte et in ogni professione fusse abile, operando per sé solo a mostrare che cosa siano le difficultà nella scienza delle linee, nella pittura, nel giudizio della scultura e nella invenzione della veramente garbata architettura.