Michelangelo
Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina, near Arezzo, Tuscany. For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence; but the bank failed, and his father, Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, briefly took a government post in Caprese, where Michelangelo was born. At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the town's Judicial administrator and "podestà" or local administrator of Chiusi della Verna. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa—a claim that remains unproven, but which Michelangelo believed.
Michael Hirst (art historian)
David Michael Geoffrey Hirst was born on 5 September 1933 and studied at New College, Oxford, and the Courtauld Institute of Art. Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and a Fellow of the Academy since 1983, Hirst has been one of the foremost specialists on the drawings of Michelangelo. Indeed, such was his international standing in the world of Michelangelo studies that he was made a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Restoration of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling in 1987, and the following year curated an exhibition on Michelangelo as Draftsman for the National Gallery of Art in Washington.