Michelangelo

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             The Medici family, the rulers of Florence and patrons of the arts, accepted Michelangelo readily because he was related to them through his grandmother. He was able to study with Lorenzo de'Medici as some called "the Magnificent,"" for his father embellished the little relationship that was there so he could send his son to that family of successful bankers who provided funding for many. While Michelangelo resided with the family he learned how to better write and speak, he also had access to pieces of literature from many authors that were almost required for a good education in the day; Plato, Aristotle, Ovid, and Virgil, as well as Seneca, Cicero, Juvenal, Plautus, and Horace.
             Michelangelo's father was not happy with his son's decision to take up art; his father only wanted his son become a successful merchant or businessman to help Buonarroti name and fortunes. Michelangelo continued with his art and studied anatomy at Garden of San Marco, where he became so enthralled with the human body that to examine it further he would trade with the prior of the local church, Niccolò Bichiellini, a wooden crucifix in exchange for examining a corpse; this was against the church's policies. His career as an artist started at the age of sixteen when he sculpted, as he says, two "relief sculptures-. These two pieces of art were the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of the Stairs.
             In about 1497 Michelangelo made his first visit to Rome. By this time in his life he had gotten over the death of the greatly beloved Lorenzo Medici, who died in 1492. When Michelangelo first arrived in Rome he presented himself to Cardinal Raffaele Riario, the richest and most powerful man of Rome at the time. Although the cardinal had 250 people living in his almost completed palace, today known as Cancelleria, he still let Michelangelo lodge with him. During his stay with the Cardinal he became engrossed in his growing collection of antiques.