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“Davide cholla fromba
e io choll’archo”
—Michael Angelo.[1]
He was born on March 6, 1475, at Caprese, in the Casentino—a rugged country of rocks and beech-trees and “pure air”[2] which dominates the backbone of the bony Apennines. Not far away, on Mount Alvernia, St. Francis of Assisi beheld his vision of the crucified Christ.
The father[3]—a violent, restless, “God-fearing” man—was podestat, or resident magistrate, of Caprese and Chiusi. The mother[4] died when Michael Angelo was six years of age.[5] They had five sons—Leonardo, Michelagniolo, Buonarroto, Giovan Simone and Sigismondo.[6]
- ↑ Poems, i. (Written on a page of drawings in the Louvre, near to the sketches for his “David.”)
- ↑ Michael Angelo was fond of saying that he owed his genius to “the pure air of the district of Arezzo.”
- ↑ Lodovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Simone. The real name of the family was Simoni.
- ↑ Francesca di Neri di Miniato del Sera.
- ↑ A few years later, in 1485, the father remarried with Lucrezia Ubaldini, who died in 1497.
- ↑ Leonardo was born in 1473; Buonarroto in 1477; Giovan Simone in 1479; Sigismondo in 1481. Leonardo became a monk. Michael Angelo thus became the eldest, the head of the family.
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