Customer Reviews

Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response (California Studies in the History of Art)

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Unlike so many of the books written on Michelangelo, I found this book to offer a matchless opportunity to look at one of the artist's major works through the eyes of the contemporary audience. With excellent scholarship and research to back up her insightful thoughts, Ms Barnes offers the reader this unique vantage from which to stand and view the somewhat puzzling and often confounding outpouring of an artistic mind; a mind troubled by both internal and external strife.In the matter of the content of The Last Judgment, Ms Barnes has seen through as much of the scholarly soot which has collected around the painting as the restorers literally removed in the past few years. Her offerings on the parallels of this work and the content of the artist's literary hero, Dante, breathed new life into my own efforts to attempt to untangle this web. If nothing else was accomplished in this book, the mere reminder that we must view art from this age with something other than 20th century eyes has proved to be invaluable. That she has demonstrated a clear way to do this is an extra bonus.Profusely illustrated not only with examples from the masterpiece, itself (including several very fine full-color reproductions of the work restored), but from a host of relative works and examples as well, the points made in this book are finely supported and demonstrated so that both novice and expert may comfortably find their way around the work.My one cavaet, and a minor one at that, would be the footnoting system. So much wonderful and compelling information was contained in the footnotes, found at the end of the book, that I spent an annoying amount of time flipping between the text and this additional information. I began to run out of fingers to stick between pages when I then started to flip to the various illustrations as they were being referred to, as well.This book has been clarifying for me on many levels. I am very thankful for, and appreciative of, the work this deceptively slim volume represents. I highly recommend it.