Interesting Facts About Michelangelo
Michelangelo had his nose broken by a jealous rival as a teenager, hated being called a painter, hid his own face in the Sistine Chapel, and was so rich yet so filthy that friends said he slept in his boots. The man was stranger than the marble.
He is a legend, but the real details are sharper and odder than the statues suggest.
Here are the facts about Michelangelo that surprise people most.
Michelangelo in brief
His broken nose: a fellow student punched him as a teenager, flattening it for life.
He insisted: he was a sculptor, not a painter, even on the Sistine ceiling.
He signed once: only the Pieta, his single signed work.
He lived filthy: hugely wealthy, yet he rarely changed his clothes or boots.
He hid himself: his own face appears on flayed skin in the Last Judgment.
The nose that never healed
As a teenager studying in the Medici garden, Michelangelo mocked a fellow student named Pietro Torrigiano once too often.
Torrigiano punched him and crushed the bridge of his nose, and later bragged that he had felt the bone give way. The flattened nose stayed for life. The story of his looks is here: what Michelangelo looked like.
He hated being called a painter
Michelangelo signed his letters sculptor, and meant it as a boundary.
He took the Sistine ceiling grudgingly and resented every year it kept him off marble. The most famous painting cycle in the world was made by a man who insisted painting was not really his job.
The one work he ever signed
After carving the Pieta at just 24, Michelangelo overheard visitors crediting it to another sculptor.
Furious, he came back at night and carved his name across the sash on Mary’s chest. It is the only work he ever signed, and to me that one flash of pride tells you everything about him.
Rich, famous and filthy
Michelangelo earned a fortune and died wealthy, yet he lived like a pauper.
His biographer noted he often worked and slept in the same clothes and boots for so long that, when he finally pulled them off, his skin came away too. Comfort and cleanliness simply did not interest him.
The face hidden in the Last Judgment
High on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, a martyred saint holds a limp, empty human skin.
The face on that flayed skin is Michelangelo's own, a dark self portrait buried in his greatest fresco. Painters loved to hide things like this, as in seven secrets in famous paintings.
FAQ with Michelangelo facts
How did he break his nose? A fellow student punched him as a teenager.
Was he a painter or sculptor? He called himself a sculptor, despite the Sistine ceiling.
Did he sign his work? Only once, the Pieta.
Did he really not wash? By his biographer's account, he rarely changed his clothes or boots.
Where is his self portrait? On the flayed skin in the Last Judgment.
The genius who would not clean his boots
Michelangelo could free a living body from a block of stone, design the dome of St Peter's, and write tender love poems, yet he could not be bothered to change his shoes.
To me that gap between the divine work and the grubby man is the most human thing about him. I trace his whole restless life in Michelangelo: The Complete Story, and how it ended is here.