Michelangelo Buonarroti

Unequaled as architect, painter, and sculptor, Michelangelo both inspired and daunted his contemporaries, who could neither surpass his achievements nor evade their challenge. His early training as a sculptor is clouded in myth, but the examples of Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, and Bertoldo were surely significant to his formation. Noted for works in marble — projects ambitious in scale, such as the David, the tomb for Pope Julius II, and the Medici tombs in S. Lorenzo — Michelangelo himself never produced bronze statuettes. But countless small reproductions after his celebrated works were made in bronze, marble, and terracotta, and they are still manufactured today. Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.