Michel Angelo was born at Caprese, in the Casentino, near Florence, on March 6, 1474 or 1475, according as we reckon from the nativity or the incarnation of Christ. He died at Rome on Friday, February 23, 1564, at the ripe age of eighty-nine or ninety. He claimed to be of the noble family of the Counts of Canossa. He certainly was of the family of the Berlinghi. His father was one of the twelve Buonomini, and was Podestà of Caprese when Michel Angelo was born. From his early youth he showed a strong inclination to art, and vainly his father sought to turn him aside from this vocation. His early studies were under Ghirlandajo. But he soon left his master to devote himself to sculpture; and he was wont to say that he “had imbibed this disposition with his nurse’s milk”—she being the wife of a stone-carver. Lorenzo the Magnificent favored him and received him into his household; and there under his patronage he prosecuted his studies, associating familiarly with some of the most remarkable men of the period, enriching his mind with their conversation, and giving himself earnestly to the study not only of art, but of science and literature. The celebrated Angelo Poliziano, then tutor to the sons of Lorenzo, was strongly attracted to him, and seems to have adopted him also as a pupil. His early efforts as a sculptor were not remarkable; and though many stories are told of his great promise and efficiency, but little weight is to be given to them. He soon, however, began to distinguish himself among his contemporaries; and his Cupid and Bacchus, though wanting in all the spirit and characteristics of antique work, were, for the time and age of the sculptor, important and remarkable. After this followed the Pietà, now in St. Peter’s at Rome, in which a different spirit began to exhibit itself; but it was not till later on that the great individuality and originality of his mind was shown, when from an inform block of rejected marble he hewed the colossal figure of David. He had at last found the great path of his genius. From this time forward he went on with ever-increasing power—working in many various arts, and stamping on each the powerful character of his mind. His grandest and most characteristic works in sculpture and painting were executed in his middle age. The Sistine Chapel he completed when he was thirty-eight years old, the stern figure of the Moses when he was forty, the great sculptures of the Medici Chapel when he was from fifty to fifty-five; and in his sixty-sixth year he finished the Last Judgment. Thenceforth his thoughts were chiefly given to architecture, with excursions into poetry—though during this latter period he painted the frescoes in the Pauline Chapel; and after being by turns sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, and poet, he spent the last years of his life in designing and superintending the erection of St. Peter’s at Rome.