Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564)was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. According to some sources, Michelangelo was already in foster care when his mother died in 1481. It appears he stayed on in foster care after his mother's death and worked alongside the other children in the family to cut stone from a local quarry. When he was seven, Michelangelo was sent to school and apprenticed to a fresco paint when he was thirteen. Several scholars have described Michelangelo as the greatest artist of his age and even as the greatest artist of all time. A number of Michelangelo's works of painting, sculpture and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in these fields was prodigious; given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches and reminiscences, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. He sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty. awe. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned, highly personal style resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.