Michelangelo: A Biography [Hardcover]

George Anthony Bull (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1997

Based on established writings, as well as on more recent research, a comprehensive new biography of the Renaissance master draws a complete picture of the life and works of Michelangelo Buonarroti, including detailed portraits of his many relationships with friends, family, and employers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1474-1564) contended that his destiny was sealed when he was suckled by a wet nurse who was the daughter of a stonemason. His David, Pieta and Sistine Chapel frescoes brought him renown by his 30s, but the biographer's problem is that he lived into his 90th year. What does one do with the rest of his life? Bull (Inside the Vatican), foreign news editor of the London Financial Times, handles the question as a thorough scholar of Italian art and politics. Since the two were inextricable in Michelangelo's time, Bull weaves his way through a mind-boggling succession of popes and wars of greed among major powers and minor principalities at a time when the papacy was a territorial player, and some of the most accomplished artists ever?Leonardo, Raphael, Bronzino, Cellini, Titian?were dependent on Vatican artistic and architectural commissions. Bull presents Michelangelo as a passionate creative genius whose inability to settle for less then perfection left him unable to complete much of the work he took on. Yet, he was also an entrepreneur eager for advances on the statuary, tombs and pictures he'd never deliver (his tomb for Julius II, even when reduced in scale, took 30 years). Drawn to muscular male bodies whose powerful evocations were the pinnacle of his art, Michelangelo also wrote effusive poetry to men to whom his affections were obvious, but he claimed in old age to have always observed sexual continence. However, he confessed, anticipating divine judgment, that he regretted having made art "both idol and monarch, like the things every man desires despite himself." Bull's crowded canvas challenges readers, but a complex and contradictory Michelangelo emerges. Illustrations.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

After translating and editing Vasari, Bull is well acquainted with the period, but his biography of Michelangelo is a perverse labor. The author repeatedly elaborates on the putative "context" of his achievement and advises readers concerned with Michelangelo's art to turn elsewhere. Instead of considering the raison d'etre of our preoccupation with the artist, Bull unreflectively drags readers through the miasma of Michelangelo's contentious relationship with his parasitic but beloved family, belabors the artist's complex dealings with powerful and sometimes frightening patrons, and forces readers to peruse the not-always-relevant political history of the time. Moreover, the more pertinent influences of contemporary religious thought and artistic theory are not adequately addressed. At times Michelangelo simply disappears from the historical recitation. Readers who might wish to learn something about the artist's art and who care to confront the great drama of his artistic and spiritual development will be left unsatisfied by this ill-illustrated, fragmented, and centerless exercise. An insightful introductory accounting of the artist's achievement can be found in Howard Hibbard's Michelangelo (HarperCollins, 1985. 2nd ed.).?Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Tech., New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 504 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312151721
• ISBN-13: 978-0312151720
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #838,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read with insight., February 23, 2001

By 

luvthearts "luvthearts" (Alameda, California USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Michelangelo: A Biography (Hardcover)

This is a very good biography of Michelangelo that ranks along with Irving Stone's "The Agony and the Ecstasy" (fictional bio). Bull includes numerous letters to and from Michelangelo that involve friends and family. One is left with a good overall picture of Michelangelo and his times. I would have given it 5 stars if Bull was a little more inquisitve about painting and how painters of the time went about their work (including Michelangelo).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I'll keep going., February 27, 2008

By 

Gerald J. Ross "jerberoni" (Monroeville, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Michelangelo: A Biography (Paperback)

I'll keep reading but I think I'm too uninformed about the Renaissance for this book to hold my attention much longer. It's nothing to jump from the year 1518 to 1513 to 1509 and back to 1519 in the space of 2 pages. And it's DRY. There are a few excerpts from various letters but they seem so vague to me. I'm not understanding the ramifications when a contract has been broken and money has already changed hands (it's happened a LOT)...I'm not understanding where the assistants come from, how many were needed, what their duties were and how they interacted with the artist, except to learn some didn't work out. I'm not understanding anything about the people he socialized with or even knew very well. I'm losing interest fast!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The divine, supreme Michelangelo, March 28, 2009

By 

K. Perentidis (Greece) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Michelangelo: A Biography (Paperback)

It is the first book I've read about Michelangelo, although I have read 3 books about the Sistine ceiling. Well, I found this book very interested despite the many details. There are so many letters of Michelangelo, but I don't know if that is helpful. One can learn a lot about his life, his family ,his friends and acquaintances. In fact, there are so many persons that one may be confused in some way. He doesn't speak about Michelangelo's art identically, but he gives a quite extensive reference for his best pictures. There are also enough historical background and a lot about his patrons. I think the historical background may be useful for anyone who wants to have a better understanding and a better knowledge if he or she wants to realise his mind, his thought,his wit, his mentality etc.
There are many pages for his family affairs and I don't think that is very helpful.In fact, it is rather tiresome, uninterested. There are also so many assistants of Michelangelo that finally I got confused.
Michelangelo's longevity,genious and searching practical intellect made him the divine, the incomparable, the insuperable painter and sculpture he was and still remains. Whoever wants something more he or she must visit Rome and Florence as well.
PS: As for his poems I am not the one who can judge them although they seem sometimes passionate and quite lyric.
About his sculptures, there aren't enough information except the Pieta in Saint Peter's and his David, although he used to call himself as a sculpure than a painter.