Michelangelo was an Italian painter, one of the most important masters of the Renaissance. As a young man, he apprenticed with Domenic Ghirlandai, a renowned Florentine painter. From 1490-92 he was at the court of the Medici Lorenzo the Magnificent, and in 1505 he was commissioned by Pope Julius II, at whose behest he painted the plafonds in the Sistine Chapel. He returned to work in the chapel in 1534, when he began work on a fresco entitled ,'The Last Judgement'. He considered himself primarily a sculptor. He did not begin his architectural activity until 1519, when he designed the façade of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. He also designed the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in the 1520s.