Michelangelo (1475-1564) marked the beginning of the modern artist, the artist who claims total freedom with no compromise. As sculptor, painter, architect and poet, he continued the tradition of the early renaissance and pushed it to it's extreme. Although working for princes, lords and pontiffs, he turned the traditional status of the artist from that of a craftsman subordinated to the wishes of his patron into that of a creator with the ultimate power to make aesthetic decisions, prepared to risk his career fro the sake of individualism and freedom. In 1512, Michelangelo climbed down for the last time from the scaffolding on which he had spent four years of his life painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a fresco covering an area of a thousand square meters with over three hundred figures illustrating the Old Testament Book of Genesis.