Michelangelo was the son of prominent Florentine patricians, who were engaged in banking for generations, but were later impoverished
On this day Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in the small village of Caprese in the Italian province of Tuscany. Today the village is called Caprese Michelangelo in his honor. Interestingly, Caprese is actually a very small village with only a few houses.
Michelangelo was the son of prominent Florentine patricians, who were engaged in banking for generations, but were later impoverished, so that Michelangelo’s father had to take a government post and become an administrator in the provincial village of Caprese, where he found himself at the time of Michelangelo’s birth. However, already a few months later, the family returned to Florence.
In Florence, Michelangelo grew up absorbing the spirit of the city that was in its golden age as a center of the European Renaissance. In adulthood Michelangelo gained a reputation as being eccentric. For example, he slept in his day clothes and boots. In dealing with people he was so rough that he did not leave behind students who would take after his skills. About statues, he said that they already exist in the stone, and that his task was only to remove the unnecessary layers hiding them.
