Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6th, 1475, at Caprese, of which town his father was Podesta.

At that time Brunelleschi had been dead twenty-nine years, Fra Angelico twenty years, Donatello nine years, Leonardo da Vinci was twenty-three years old, and Raphael was not yet born.

Lorenzo the Magnificent had been on what was virtually the throne of Florence since 1469 and was a young man of twenty-six.

For foster-mother the child had the wife of a stone-mason at Settignano, whither the family soon moved, and Michelangelo used to say that it was with her milk that he imbibed the stone-cutting art.

It was from the air too, for Settignano's principal industry was sculpture.