Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo. His father worked as a Judicial administrator Michelangelo's father sent him to study grammar with the Humanist Francesco da Urbino in Florence as a young boy. The young artist, however, showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of painters He was the best pupil in a painters school

Michelangelo's father marks the date as 6 March 1474 in the Florentine manner ab Incarnatione. However, in the Roman manner, ab Nativitate, it is b. Sources disagree on the point: how old Michelangelo was when he went to school. De Tolnay writes that he was ten years old while Sedgwick notes in her translation of Condivi that Michelangelo was seven. The Strozzi family acquired the sculpture Hercules. Filippo Strozzi sold it to Francis I in In 1594, Henry IV installed it in the Jardin d'Estang at Fontainebleau where it disappeared in 1713 when the Jardin d'Estange was destroyed. Vasari makes no mention of this episode and Paolo Giovio's Life of Michelangelo indicates that Michelangelo tried to pass the statue as an antique.