He was called "divine" by his colleagues, yet he felt himself a failure... he was the pet of popes, but he was starved for love... he slept in his boots, and his head was filled with the loftiest beauty... he was an ascetic who portrayed the human body with an unprecedented voluptuousness... he claimed he couldn't paint the Sistine Chapel, though it became his greatest triumph ...he combined the simplicity of a peasant with superhuman genius. This was Michelangelo.
Introducing the TIME-LIFE Library of Art
TIME-LIFE BOOKS' new series, which covers the whole range of Western art from the Renaissance to the present, begins, appropriately, with The World of Michelangelo. For Michelangelo was the very soul of the Renaissance... an archetypal artist whose achievements reduced the historian Varchi to stammering' and "trepidations" as he delivered the funeral oration. Brought up by a lowly stonecutter, contracted into virtual bondage by his father, torn by a perpetual tug-of-war for his talents, Michelangelo still was able to dominate the most fantastic flowering of art the world has ever seen.
Though his career was sometimes bedeviled by such distractions as disputing with popes, dodging political assassins, and working with his dinner in one hand, Michelangelo managed to paint the more than 300 figures of the Sistine Chapel, sculpt a sublimely beautiful Pieta, complete the gigantic David, the Medici tombs and the magnificent Moses, and design the dome of St. Peter's.
The World of Michelangelo was written by Robert Coughlan, a specialist on the Italian Renaissance. Not only an absorbing biography, it is a gorgeous gallery as well: you'll see all of Michelangelo's paintings and major sculpture faithfully reproduced in its pages. Here, too, is his Florence, as much museum as city, continually torn among politics, pleasure and piety, a cradle of art and a battlefield of ideas.
For all its flawless full-color reproductions, The World of Michelangelo is more than an art book. Showing the relation between the man, his work and his world, it indicates how Michelangelo was influenced by his time and influenced it in turn. Through Michelangelo you will come to understand the genius and the genesis of all art.
The format of the Library of Art books is designed to frame and flatter the superb pictures in their pages. Over 9" x 12", the books are bound in gold-stamped, specially-treated leather spines, and protected by a hard board slipcase with a color reproduction on its cover. Each volume contains about 200 pages, 40,000 words of text and over 150 illustrations in full color and black and white.