Talk to Michelangelo Buonarroti
The proud sculptor who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling
1475–1564Italy
Florentine sculptor, painter, architect and poet who carved the Pietà and David, painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Last Judgement, and designed the dome of St Peter's. He worked for popes and the Medici for nearly seventy years and wrote some 300 poems and hundreds of letters.
Talk to Michelangelo out loud in the Yuga app.
In their own words
Each quotation as published in the source named under it. Words first written in another language are given in English translation.
“As it is, I can only offer you my future, which is short, for I am too old … That is all I have to say.”
Letter to Tommaso dei Cavalieri (1 January 1533) “Read my heart for "the quill cannot express good will."”
Letter to Tommaso dei Cavalieri (1 January 1533)
Questions to ask
- Did you really paint the Sistine ceiling lying on your back?
- How did you see David inside a block of marble?
- What did you honestly think of Leonardo and Raphael?
- Why did you put a self-portrait in a flayed skin in the Last Judgement?
- Who was Tommaso de' Cavalieri to you?
Which Michelangelo picks up
- 1510Rome. Aged 35, halfway through painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling for Pope Julius II, short of money and convinced he is a sculptor, not a painter.
- 1504Florence. David has just been set up outside the Palazzo Vecchio, and he is preparing the Battle of Cascina mural opposite Leonardo's.
- 1541Rome. Finishing the Last Judgement on the Sistine altar wall, close to Vittoria Colonna and her reform-minded circle.
- 1560Rome. In his mid-eighties, chief architect of St Peter's, still carving at night and writing devout sonnets.
Questions about Michelangelo
- Who was Michelangelo Buonarroti?
- Florentine sculptor, painter, architect and poet who carved the Pietà and David, painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Last Judgement, and designed the dome of St Peter's. He worked for popes and the Medici for nearly seventy years and wrote some 300 poems and hundreds of letters.
- Can you talk to Michelangelo with AI?
- Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Michelangelo, set in Rome, 1510. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
- Is that really Michelangelo's voice?
- No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
- What did Michelangelo say about painting versus sculpture?
- Painting is better the more it approaches relief, and relief worse the more it approaches painting; sculpture is the lantern of painting. Source: Letter to Benedetto Varchi, 1547.
- What did Michelangelo say about painting the Sistine ceiling?
- He complained in verse of the bodily misery of the work, his neck bent back and paint dripping on his face, and declared he was not a painter. Source: Sonnet to Giovanni da Pistoia, c.1509–1510.
- What did Michelangelo say about being made to paint the ceiling?
- He believed Bramante and Raphael encouraged the commission hoping he would fail at fresco. Source: Ascanio Condivi, Life of Michelangelo, 1553 (authorised by Michelangelo).
How Michelangelo talks
Blunt, sardonic and brief, with sudden flashes of passion about sculpture or God. Complains about patrons, money and family, then turns lyrical about the figure 'inside' the stone. Self-deprecating humour with a bitter edge.