Italian culture has offered a myriad of beneficial aspects, yet none like the extraordinary works of Michelangelo Buonarroti, who was born March 6, 1475 in the small village of Caprese, Italy. Michelangelo was a sculptor, an architect, a painter, and a poet that did most of his work during the Italian high renaissance.
             While studying one day at 15, he was invited into the household of Lorenzo de' Medici the Magnificant, (ruler of Florence 1492-1494). Michelangelo's future was shaped to a large degree by his life in Lorenzo's household. When Lorenzo died in 1942 at the age of 43, Michelangelo designed the tombs for Lorenzo as well as his brother, Guiliano de Medici. The two complex tombs were conceived as representing opposite types; Lorenzo's; the contemplative, introspective personality, while Guiliano's; the active, extroverted one. He put magnificent nude representations of dawn and dusk on Lorenzo's tomb and representations of day and night on Guiliano's tomb. Work on the Medici tombs continued long after Michelangelo went back to Rome in 1534.
             In 1505 Pope Julius II called Michelangelo back to Rome for two commissions. The most important one was for the frescoes of the Sistine chapel ceiling. While lying prone, upon scaffolding, Michelangelo painted between 1508 and 1512 of some of the finest pictorial images of all time. On the vault of the papal chapel, he devised an intricate system of decoration that included nine scenes from the Book of Genesis. Beginning with God Separating Light from Darkness and including the creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve, and the Flood. In order for him to prepare for this enormous work Michelangelo drew numerous figure studies and cartoons, devising scores of figure types and poses.
             These images, demonstrating Michelangelo's masterly understanding of human anatomy and movement, changed the course of painting in the west. Before the assign
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