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It is frequently recounted that shortly before Michelangelo died, the eighty-eight-year-old artist sat before a fire and burned many drawings. Critical examination reveals various motivations for s... more...

This essay is a preliminary sketch for a book that examines Michelangelo Buonarroti’s final eighteen years, from his appointment as architect of St. Peter’s until his death in 1564, that is, from age seventy-one to a few weeks shy of eighty-nine. This period represents nearly a quarter of his approximately seventy-five-year artistic career, yet it remains the least familiar segment of Michelangelo’s long life. It is paradoxical that in the final phase of his career, Michelangelo remained prodigiously creative and influential without being prolific — as he had been earlier in his career. His late life was concerned less with making things than with finding the courage and devotion to continue tasks that he knew he would never see to fruition, and this despite the loss of his closest friends, greatest patron, and his entire family. more...

There is such an abundance of documentary information about the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti that we necessarily are selective in our use of the primary sources: nearly 1,400 letters to and from the artist, more than three hundred published pages of his personal and professional ricordi, and an extensive correspondence among members of his immediate family. In addition to what they tell us about the artist and his commissions, these primary sources offer a rich and detailed picture of everyday life in Renaissance Italy. The following miscellany is offered as diverse glimpses into the world and work of Michelangelo, a sort of micro-historical view of a major historical figure. more...

Cammy Brothers ; Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture ; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008, 259 pp., 76 color and 199 b/w illus. $65, ISBN 9780300124897 Michelangelo emphatically declared that architecture "non sia mia arte." So when and how did Michelangelo become an architect? One might speculate that designing the monumental tomb of Julius II in 1505 prompted him to think like an architect. Some scholars would point to the painted architecture of the Sistine ceiling (1508––12). Or one may legitimately argue that Michelangelo's career as an architect began only with the San Lorenzo faccade in 1516, when the artist was forty years old. As Cammy Brothers clearly demonstrates in her stimulating new study, Michelangelo came to architecture slowly. And much of this early activity——the tomb of Julius II, the Sistine Chapel, and even the San Lorenzo faccade——is, as Brothers ably describes, less architecture than a "means of constructing a frame around figures." Michelangelo was still thinking primarily as a sculptor. Indeed, among its many contributions, the book describes the character and origins of Michelangelo's architectural thinking and tracks its gradual emergence from his work as a figurative artist. For Michelangelo, the ties uniting bodies and buildings were natural and multiple. The book considers the years 1505 to 1534 as critical in the formation of Michelangelo the architect. Brothers examines the interactions among different strands of the artist's activity, particularly in the arena of drawings. Thus, long before he built, Michelangelo had a well-developed foundation for his architectural thinking and practice. Drawing is key, as is evident in the title of the book and … more...

This article relates the history of a little known Michelangelo project for a reliquary tabernacle in the church of San Silvestro in Capite, Rome. A primary object of the essay is to explain the social dynamics contained in this history and to reveal the interplay of personal, political, and professional relations that are involved even in a minor undertaking by a major artist. Particularly important is the cast of characters involved and the blurring of the boundaries of patronage, favor, and friendship. Ultimately the project is interesting for the view it provides of Michelangelo in a dense web of social relations at an unusually busy moment in the artist's career. more...

The Risen Christ by Michelangelo in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome is one of the artist's least admired works. While modern observers frequently have found fault with the statue, it satisfied its patrons enormously and was widely admired by contemporaries. Not least, the sculpture has suffered from the manner in which it is presently displayed and from biased photographic reproduction that emphasizes unfavorable and inappropriate views of Christ. In this paper, I examine the Risen Christ afresh by restoring it to its original context and discussing its unusual and moving iconography. Thus, it is possible to comprehend the effect of the Christ as a devotional object, to appreciate its success as a work of art, and to account for some of the modern distaste. more...

Since Charles de Tolnay first published them in 1940, Michelangelo's drawings for the fortifications of Florence have stimulated considerable scholarly interest. Tolnay likened the zoomorphic shapes of Michelangelo's sketches to crustaceous creatures. The analogy has become a commonplace, and while helping to describe the formal appearance of these unexpected designs, it has led most scholars to question their purpose and practicality. Furthermore, every scholar has followed Tolnay's general view that the series proceeds from the simple to the complex, with the drawings becoming increasingly abstract and fantastic. This paper proposes that Michelangelo's process of design was exactly the opposite. Beginning with abstract and complex ideas, Michelangelo proceeded to develop and refine his conceptions in a series of drawings that reflect a rational process of design. This hypothesis is more in accord with the historical facts and the documentary evidence and is based on a close analysis of the drawings themselves. The 20 sheets preserved in the Casa Buonarroti are evidence of Michelangelo's practical concern with particular problems of Florence's defense in 1528-1529 and represent the first stage of his successful activity as a military engineer for the Republic. more...