Daniele da Volterra

For four centuries his nickname was an insult: Il Braghettone, the breeches-maker. Daniele da Volterra is the painter who covered the nudes in Michelangelo's Last Judgment, and it turned him into a figure of fun, a prude who put underpants on the Sistine Chapel.

The truth is stranger. Daniele was one of Michelangelo's closest friends and followers, trusted by the old master himself. The order to clothe the figures came from the Counter-Reformation Church, which had grown uneasy about naked bodies above the altar. The Council of Trent condemned such things in 1563, and the task fell to Daniele around 1565, near the end of his own life. He added a few loincloths and veils in fresco, and later hands added far more.

Set that aside and look at what he could actually do. His Descent from the Cross, in the church of Trinità dei Monti above the Spanish Steps in Rome, was so admired that the French painter Nicolas Poussin later ranked it among the three finest paintings in the city, beside a Raphael. And when Michelangelo died in 1564, it was Daniele, the trusted friend, who took the death mask and set about casting a bronze bust from it. He was still working on those casts when he died himself, in 1566.