Customer Reviews

The Life of Michelangelo

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Condivi's account of the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti is a wonderful resource for fascinating stories on the artist as well as an incite into the artist himself. It is repetitious of Vasari's account of Michelangelo in the Lives of the Artists; consequently both sources complement each other well. It is important to realise that Condivi was an apprentice to Michelangelo and that he wrote this biography while Michelangelo was still alive. While the artist may have been looking over Condivi's shoulder while he wrote the text, it is still very useful - especially in placing the artist in the context of the time. The book shows the interaction between Michelangelo and his patrons - Lorenzo d' Medici, Pope Julius II, Soderini - and countless other fascinating people. After reading Michelangelo's letters, this should be one of the first sources cited to get a feel for the artist as, not only an artist, but a person.

Biographies of Michelangelo have been written and rewritten by countless scholars up to this very day. If you want to get away from all the revisionist histories and psuedo-psychological mumbo-jumbo and read a bio written by someone who knew Michelangelo personally (Condivi was a student of the master's) then you simply must buy this book. It is on the short side, but no other biographer was this close to the man himself. Even Giorgio Vasari, the other contemporary Michelangelo biographer, rewrote large portions of his "Life of Michelangelo" to include details from Condivi's account. If you are at all interested in Michelangelo's life or art, this is the best place to start. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

/The Life of Michelangelo/ by Ascanio Condivi is a classic, written by an associate of Michelangelo at his request during the master's lifetime. As such, it is essential reading for Michelangelo scholars and even university-level students seeking a period, primary source on the subject. However, the nature of the work means that it is tendentious and inspirational rather than rigorous. In the end, it does not contain the kind of information needed for serious research, especially if one is looking for one or two works that combine comprehensive biographical study and reproductions of Michelangelo's work.

Though binding quality is high and charming, this book is very small--merely several inches by several inches--and thin. It is short on reliable information (again, other than its roots in the period) and on examples of Michelangelo's work, both in quantity and in presentation (a 4X5 inch book hardly provides the format necessary for displaying the panoramas of the Sistine Chapel and the Pieta).

If you have an interest in the Renaissance and its great artists BUY this book. The author was a friend of the Master and the reader gets a true sense of the man and the times he lived in.

Condvi's biography of Michelangelo is a necessity for anyone studying the artist beyond a superficial level. I first looked for it in Italian in Rome. It is presently out of print there, but the shop attendant told me that it had been recently translated in English and printed by Penn State University. So I searched for it in the U.S. this summer but I couldn't find it in the bookshops there. either. I was so thankful to Amazon.com for giving me a way to purchase this beautiful, new and scholarly version.

This was a wonderful book and even though it was translated it read smoothly and I woud recomend it to anyone