Few artists in the history of the world have attained the mythic status of Michelangelo--painter of the heavenly Sistine Chapel and sculptor of the nearly divine David. And it is his towering presence that makes it so difficult to imagine the artist as a man. Art historian James Beck helps unlock the mystery of Michelangelo by opening the doors of the three very different worlds to which he belonged. Michelangelo's father, his famous and influential patron Lorenzo de Medici, and Pope Julius II who, according to Beck, forced the Sistine Chapel commission onto its now-famous painter, divided the rule of these worlds between them and held powerful sway over the artist. Michelangelo left behind a fair amount of correspondence, upon which Beck heavily relies. But beyond that, there is a dearth of reliable information about the subject. Michelangelo himself carefully oversaw the contemporary biographies--selling 16th-century writers on the notion that he was divinely preordained to become a renowned artist. Beck is clearly a careful researcher and he skillfully combines the facts at hand and collateral information about the era to recreate the artist's world. He freely draws on this information to form opinions about his subject's sexuality, passion for his art, and relationships to the powerful men in his life. He evokes, too, a strong visual sense of Michelangelo's environment--the Medici palace where he lived for a time, the Vatican of the Renaissance, the artist's own work. This is definitely a compelling story, but bear in mind that because of the distinct lack of reliable source material, this biography falls somewhere between fact and well-informed historical fiction.
From Publishers Weekly
This anemic treatment of Michelangelo Buonarroti's early career aspires to "reach the quality that lies behind both his life and his work?his humanity," in order to counterbalance the epithet "divine" that has been his since the Renaissance. Beck (coauthor of Art Restoration: The Culture, the Business and the Scandal), a Columbia University art historian, identifies three strong father figures who, Beck writes, served as distinctive "epicenters" for Michelangelo's surging creativity: Lorenzo de' Medici, the de facto leader of Florence who encouraged the artist during his adolescence; Lodovico Buonarroti, his biological father, whose querulous influence increased markedly with Lorenzo's death in 1492; and Pope Julius II, his greatest patron. However, Beck fails to exploit this promising analytical framework, instead proceeding in a ploddingly chronological fashion. Rather than bringing the artist's multiple "worlds" into useful focus, or demonstrating how the three men informed his work (beyond the tender family scenes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel), Beck sets out to debunk stock theories about Michelangelo: his terribilita (terrible disposition), his homosexuality, his aesthetic leaning toward the non finito (unfinished) and the conceptual grouping of the central Sistine narratives (opposing the conventional three groups of three, Beck contends for a four-one-four arrangement, a point hardly relevant to the lay reader). Granted, Beck offers some wonderful anecdotes, and his account of a meeting held on January 25, 1504 to discuss the placement of Michelangelo's 13-foot David is nothing short of thrilling, as Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Perugino, Filipino Lippi, Piero di Cosimo and everyone else of consequence in the Florentine art world all weighed in on the subject of their fellow artist's greatest triumph. Ultimately, this is a frustrating book with some very engaging passages. B&w illustrations.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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