Michelangelo’s statue of the Madonna della Pietà is one of his most famous works He completed it in 1499 S EA R C H LIG H T David was the name of Michelangelo’s a teacher b student c statue 10 S u p e r S t o c k
MICHELANGELO G e nius of European A r Once there was a small boy in Florence who loved to watch painters and sculptors at work He wanted to be an artist but his father did not like the idea Little did the man know that his son Michelangelo would become one of the world’s most famous artists t Michelangelo began training as an artist at age 13 He was so interested in his art that he often forgot to eat and slept on the floor beside his unfinished artwork He refused help even on big projects so some works took years to complete Many were never finished Michelangelo worked in Rome and Florence In Rome he was commissioned to carve a Pietà This is a S t e f a n o i B a n c h e t t i C o r b s i P i z z o l l i A b e r t o C o r b s S y g m a i marble statue showing the Virgin Mary supporting the dead Christ on her knees The finished work known as the Madonna della Pietà made him famous And in Florence Michelangelo spent two years working on a huge block of marble From it he carved David one of the world’s finest and best-known sculptures Between 1508 and 1512 Michelangelo created his most famous work the paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Top Portrait of Michelangelo Bottom Michelangelo’s frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling and west wall behind the altar Rome’s Vatican He painted much of the ceiling while lying on his back in a tight cramped position The fresco paintings of figures and events from the Bible are huge and splendid The wall behind the altar depicts the Last Judgment of humanity by God Michelangelo was so admired that he became the first European artist whose life story was written during his own lifetime LEARN MORE READ THESE ARTICLES LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN FRANCISCO DE GOYA XIA GUI DID YOU KNOW into went that ime t found t the Michelangelo l te al Despi te poems twork i his ar ldings to design bui and even create defensive st Florence for wr ime ructures Answer c statue 11
S EA R C H LIG H T Frida Kahlo’s most famous paintings were a murals b self-portraits c buses 12
T h e Brilliant ColorsofMexic o Mexican painter Frida Kahlo’s life was filled with struggles But her dazzlingly colorful self-portraits reflect Kahlo’s power and confidence in the face of her hardships When Kahlo was a child she had polio and the disease kept her right leg from growing properly Then when she was 18 Kahlo was in a terrible bus accident For the rest of her life she had many operations to try to correct both of these problems Kahlo began to paint while she was recovering from the bus accident Her paintings were often dramatic self-portraits that showed Kahlo’s powerful feelings about herself and the world she lived in Their brilliant colors reflect Kahlo’s strong attitude toward life Before the bus accident Kahlo had met the famous Mexican painter Diego Rivera while he was painting a mural at her school Later she showed Rivera some of her paintings and he encouraged her to keep working at her art Kahlo and Rivera were married in 1929 They traveled to the United States where Diego had received commissions for murals Kahlo kept painting and met many important people of the time The artist Pablo Picasso admired her work And many of her well-known friends helped her show her paintings in Europe and America Kahlo’s work was called surrealistic by some Surrealism is a style FRIDA KAHLO of art that has a strange dreamlike quality Kahlo however said that her paintings were the reality that she felt and that they spanned reality and dreams In the spring of 1953 Kahlo had the only exhibition of her work in Mexico She died one year later Today her house in Coyoacán is the Frida Kahlo Museum LEARN MORE READ THESE ARTICLES SARAH BERNHARDT FRANCISCO DE GOYA VINCENT VAN GOGH Frida Kahlo was the first Hispanic woman to be featured on a U S postage stamp The stamp seen here being unveiled featured one of her famous self-portraits AFP Corbis DID YOU KNOW Kahlo was very proudly Mexican She often wore very decorative Mexican jewelry and native clothing Her hairstyle piled high on her head was also in the style of the people of the Mexican state of Oaxaca Answer b self-portraits 13
