David (Michelangelo) in the context of "David (Bernini)"

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. He was born in the Republic of Florence but was mostly active in Rome from his 30s onwards. His work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.

Michelangelo achieved fame early. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before the age of 30. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and The Last Judgment on its altar wall. His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. At the age of 71, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the Western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death.

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments and private institutions. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is referred to as self-censorship. General censorship occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control obscenity, pornography, and hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel. Specific rules and regulations regarding censorship vary between legal jurisdictions and/or private organizations.

Baroque painting is the painting associated with the Baroque cultural movement. The movement is often identified with Absolutism, the Counter Reformation and Catholic Revival, but the existence of important Baroque art and architecture in non-absolutist and Protestant states throughout Western Europe underscores its widespread popularity.

Baroque painting encompasses a great range of styles, as most important and major painting during the period beginning around 1600 and continuing throughout the 17th century, and into the early 18th century is identified today as Baroque painting. In its most typical manifestations, Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich, deep colour, and intense light and dark shadows, but the classicism of French Baroque painters like Poussin and Dutch genre painters such as Vermeer are also covered by the term, at least in English. As opposed to Renaissance art, which usually showed the moment before an event took place, Baroque artists chose the most dramatic point, the moment when the action was occurring: Michelangelo, working in the High Renaissance, shows his David composed and still before he battles Goliath; Bernini's Baroque David is caught in the act of hurling the stone at the giant. Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality that had been prized during the Renaissance.

Contrapposto (Italian pronunciation: [kontrapˈposto] 'counterpoise'), in the visual arts, is a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot, so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs in the axial plane.

First appearing in Ancient Greece in the early 5th century BCE, contrapposto is considered a crucial development in the history of Ancient Greek art (and, by extension, Western art), as it marks the first time in Western art that the human body is used to express a psychological disposition. The style was further developed and popularized by sculptors in the Hellenistic and Imperial Roman periods, fell out of use in the Middle Ages, and was later revived during the Renaissance. Michelangelo's statue of David, one of the most iconic sculptures in the world, is a famous example of contrapposto.

Italian Renaissance sculpture was an important part of the art of the Italian Renaissance, in the early stages arguably representing the leading edge. The example of Ancient Roman sculpture hung very heavily over it, both in terms of style and the uses to which sculpture was put. In complete contrast to painting, there were many surviving Roman sculptures around Italy, above all in Rome, and new ones were being excavated all the time, and keenly collected. Apart from a handful of major figures, especially Michelangelo and Donatello, it is today less well-known than Italian Renaissance painting, but this was not the case at the time.

Italian Renaissance sculpture was dominated by the north, above all by Florence. This was especially the case in the quattrocento (15th century), after which Rome came to equal or exceed it as a centre, though producing few sculptors itself. Major Florentine sculptors in stone included (in rough chronological order, with dates of death) Orcagna (1368), Nanni di Banco (1421), Filippo Brunelleschi (1446), Nanni di Bartolo (1451), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1455), Donatello (1466), Bernardo (1464) and his brother Antonio Rossellino (1479), Andrea del Verrocchio (1488), Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1498), Michelangelo (1564), and Jacopo Sansovino (1570). Elsewhere there was the Siennese Jacopo della Quercia (1438), from Lombardy Pietro Lombardo (1515) and his sons, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo (1522), Andrea Sansovino (1529), Vincenzo Danti (1576), Leone Leoni (1590), and Giambologna (1608, born in Flanders).

The historical evolution of the nude in art runs parallel to the history of art in general, except for small particularities derived from the different acceptance of nudity by the various societies and cultures that have succeeded each other in the world over time. The nude is an artistic genre that consists of the representation in various artistic media (painting, sculpture or, more recently, film and photography) of the naked human body. It is considered one of the academic classifications of works of art. Nudity in art has generally reflected the social standards for aesthetics and morality of the era in which the work was made. Many cultures tolerate nudity in art to a greater extent than nudity in real life, with different parameters for what is acceptable: for example, even in a museum where nude works are displayed, nudity of the visitor is generally not acceptable. As a genre, the nude is a complex subject to approach because of its many variants, both formal, aesthetic and iconographic, and some art historians consider it the most important subject in the history of Western art.

Although it is usually associated with eroticism, the nude can have various interpretations and meanings, from mythology to religion, including anatomical study, or as a representation of beauty and aesthetic ideal of perfection, as in Ancient Greece. Its representation has varied according to the social and cultural values of each era and each people, and just as for the Greeks the body was a source of pride, for the Jews—and therefore for Christianity—it was a source of shame, it was the condition of slaves and the miserable.

In culture, a "fig leaf" is a literal or figurative method of obscuring an act or object considered embarrassing or distasteful with something of innocuous appearance. The use of an actual fig leaf for the purpose originates in Western painting and sculpture, where leaves would be used by artists themselves or by later censors in order to hide the genitalia of a subject. Use of the fig plant in particular came about as a Biblical reference to the Book of Genesis, in which Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover their nudity after eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A "fig-leaf edition" of a work is known as an expurgation or Bowdlerization.