Most of human history we didn't have electronic distraction devices and we have one Michelangelo; the answer is probably not as many as the question implies.

I'm not educated in painting but will just assume it's similar to music and someone like Mozart. I genuinely believe you wouldn't get as many as you'd imagine. There were few people making music at that time and only a small portion of the population ever had the chance to listen to it (.5-1% around 1750, 5-10% around 1850). We didn't get 10x the number of Mozarts. We got some people who were as talented as him for sure and pushed boundaries and some got famous for it We also got many talented people who wrote very great music which doesn't get played at all anymore, many of those didn't push the boundaries.

Even with people like Beethoven who're seen as disruptors and wildly popular by general audiences there were talented disruptors at the time who actually did things he's 'known' for and they don't get played at all. Bach himself had largely fallen into obscurity for +-100 years. There's probably only so many Michelangelos or Mozarts people can be taught about in middle school, high school, university.... I believe it's more about the institutions that basically allowed someone like mozart or michelangelo some kinda 'patronage oligopoly', something which barely exists these days. Free market didn't really exist here well into the 1800s, even then you still had gatekeepers. In the end history picked a few winners very loosely related to their 'musical worth'.

The same as any other century. The whole point of Michelangelo is that he went beyond the limits of his time. To be the Michelangelo of today you need to go beyond the limits/tastes of today, not of Michelangelo's time. And the Michelangelo of today would not be identifiable in any way with Michelangelo given where modern art ended up in terms of style.

It's like that quote about it taking Picasso 4 years to learn to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to learn how to paint like a child.

Or think of it this way: Your average math PhD today is way better at math than Galois, Bernoulli, Gauss, etc. But they are nowhere near them because the field moved into a different stratosphere entirely.

I don't think there is that significant amount of artists that do not draw because entertainment. Artist communities online are doing pretty fine. There might not be enough money for all of them, but drawing is still popular enough hobby.

Children today are expected to go to school and get a well rounded education. They don’t start specializing as apprentice to some master at an early age

Not many at all. In the past 100 years there have been a staggering number of people alive, vastly more than in the 13th century. Comparatively very few of them had electronic distraction devices. Adding some small faction additional people-without-electronics-hours won't move the needle.

Also consider the tools and materials available today. I don't know much about Michelangelo, but I imagine people's opportunity for sheer iteration (due to availability of qualitys pens, pappers, ink etc) is magnitudes higher (and cheaper) today.

They're making art all around you. Some of them are extraordinarily famous.

Movies, video games, music.

They are busy making other stuff. Its OK if you don't appreciate their work.

There are plenty, but the value of Michelangelo’s brand is in its’ scarcity.

Do we want more Michelangelos?