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Summary: Michaelangelo still shines brightly
Review: I just finished this wonderful book by Ross King. It details the life of Michaelangelo during the 4 years he spent painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It offers a mix of family history, art history, Vatican history and a detailed overview of each scene in the chapel and what may have led to its creation.King is great at making history come alive. He includes incidents both private and public in an effort to allow the reader to understand not only the artist, but also time in which he lived. King's previous book, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, contained all these traits as well. I read through each of these books in the course of a week or so, picking them up when I had a spare moment or needed to engage in something other than business books or my daily work.
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Summary: Worthwhile reading even if you're not into the subject.
Review: I purchased this book because after reading the first few pages, at a bookstore, I was hooked on the narrative. Ross King has written a masterful account of the intrigue, hardships and politics which surrounded the painting of the Sistine Chapel. It is wonderful to read about all the historical people who are involved in this story. I particularly appreciate that Mr. King doesn't show us only the good side of these people, but is willing to show us the bad as well. I think that is what sets this book apart from the typical dry texts on this subject. As concerned, apparently, as Michelangelo was for the painting of the ceiling he also had an extended family which drove him to distraction, and it is information like this which fleshes out the story. And because the people are described as ordinary individuals of complex character, who accomplished extraordinary things, we are given a fuller picture of what life was like at that time. Definitely one of the best books I read in 2003.
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Summary: Painting the Sistine Chapel
Review: I saw the Charlton Heston - Rex Harrison movie about Michelangelo and Pope Julius II many years ago, and so assumed that I knew a lot about the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. After reading this book, I realize that I was very wrong! This work is extremely well written and fast-paced. We get mini biographies of numerous historical figures, plus great dollops of Italian and European history to boot. The author tells a terrific story in lucid prose, and the reader is simply fascinated with how the painting was accomplished. Even though the romantic notion of Michelangelo paining by lying on his back for years, paint dripping all over his face, is not factual, the true tale is every bit as fascinating! This is one of those niche pieces of history that is well covered by this book, and I highly recommend this work to anyone with a penchant for the offbeat in historical action.
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Summary: Beauty In Context
Review: I thoroughy enjoyed this book. I liked it best for the context it gives to this famous work.
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Summary: Great Insight into a Great Painter
Review: I was always skeptical about Michelangelo, I was always more particular to Bernini's sculpture, however this book tells of the real man. His Sistine Ceiling is so breathtaking, it was great to read about what he went through in his life. I love Ross King's books, I wish he would write more about Architects and Painters.
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Summary: Wonderful Book!
Review: I wish I had read this book before I went to Italy. When I saw the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, I was overwhelmed, I didn't know what to look at first and consequently I missed more than I saw. This book lets you see the paintings as Michelangelo saw them, explains what he painted and why, how the paintings came to be and what was going on in Rome and Europe at the time. This is an engaging, fascinating book - the only negative, as another reviewer stated, is that there are not enough photos of the paintings. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in art, history or just interested in a well written tale!
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Summary: Highly Entertaining and Informative
Review: I'd seen this book and BRUNELLESCHI'S DOME in bookstores for quite a while. I just couldn't bring myself to purchase either for a very silly reason. The author's name, Ross King, just didn't sound very authoritative to me, for some reason. More a name for a movie actor than a Rennaissance biographer. As it turns out, that was a baseless bias. King definitely knows his stuff, as the book's bulging bibliography will attest to. Purists may be put off by the fact that this book is so entertaining, that it can't possibly be serious scholarship. I say let them stick to Jacob Burckhardt, I'll take Ross King, any day. This is a masterly book, and King is an excellent story teller, marshalling his facts and arraying them in taut, controlled prose. His is an excellent overview of the full panoply of figures and events that made late 15th, early 14th c. Italy such an extraordinary place and era. Michelangelo lived in a time that teemed with larger than life figures. The Borgias were still wielding influence in Florence and Rome. Amongst Michelangelo's contemporaries that put in an appearance in the book are the firebrand priest, Girolamo Savonarola, Martin Luther, Machiavelli, and two of the other greatest artists of the Rennaissance, Leonardo and Raphael. The rivalry between Michelangelo and Raphael is one of the keynotes of the book. Raphael and his team of artisans were frescoing the pope's private rooms in the Vatican at the same time Michelangelo was frescoing the massive vault of the Sistine Chapel. Raphael is depicted as an expansive, open-minded, hedonist, good looking and attractive to all. Michelangelo is a "jug-eared, flat-nosed, and rather squat, somewhat miserly loner, who also happened to possess an unparalleled artistic genius. King is particularly adept at conveying exactly how delicate and painstaking the art frescoing actually was. The artist would have only a brief window of time to apply the precious pigments before the plaster dried. Michelangelo started the project knowing very little about the involved techniques necessary to perform under such a timetable. As the months and years went by, he became so adept that he could paint ever larger sections at breakneck speed. He had to learn his craft on the fly, however, under incredibly difficult conditions. King dispels a couple myths that have come down to us, primarily via Irving Stone and from the movie version of his novel, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY. It is highly unlikely that Michelangelo had to paint any sections of the ceiling on his back. He did however, have to assume some rather uncomfortable craning postures for hours at a time. It's also evident that the artist didn't work alone on the project. He would hire assistants as the need arose. He definitely didn't mix his own pigments, for instance, a time consuming, exact and laborious task in itself. This in no way diminishes just how Herculean an effort he exerted, however. The sheer physical toll the painting exacted on his body was quite real. His spirit was drained by the enterprise. It was, after all, not a project he was eager to pursue. Had it not been for the overbearing will of Julius II, he would have turned the opportunity down and concentrated instead on sculpture, his first love. This is a book I recommend without reservation and it goes to the top of my current list of reading suggestions. It's relatively brief at just over 200 pages and will keep anyone with even the slightest appreciation of art and of genius riveted. BEK
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Summary: Fascinating, and very accessible! Not dry at all.
Review: I'm no art historian, but I found this fascinating, and a very easy read. Excellent scholarship, obviously, but written for a wide audience, rather than an academic one. I didn't want to put this one down, and was impatient waiting for his other book, Brunelleschi's Dome to be returned to my local library. It too, was fascinating, and even briefer, much to my surprise. Ross King could make anyone like reading about art history and architecture. I learned a lot about both, and now want to go back and see these sights again!
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Summary: Good, overall - more on the topic would have been better.
Review: I'm not a fan of historical books but the topic of arts intertwigled with the Papacy was too good for me to resist. The book is a very well written, real non-fiction page-turner, which does not have the typical hundred names and hundreds places and dates of the typical historical book. It has plenty of interesting facts about the time of Michelangelo's fresco paintings, and places the topic well in the time and place context of such an age. However, there is a relatively small proportion of the book that is specifically focused on the topic of the title. Rather, the author sidetracks time and time again on events that occur at the time when the Sistine Chapel ceiling was being painted. Although not related, the topics described are quite interesting and the overall narration flows quite well. This is definetly not a biography on Michelangelo, neither is it a compendium on fresco painting. It is a very good historical book, which could have been complemented with plenty of more insights into the subject matter rather than delving on tangents.
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Summary: A solid, well told history; drier than I expected
Review: I've come to expect a certain popular story-telling structure from best-seller non fiction, but this book takes a decidedly drier approach than I imagined it would. It's an honest, academically researched, meticulously laid out history.
Rather than relying on dramatization of events, or on assumptions about the details of the lives he portrays, King lets the story unfold without a lot of frills. He's honest about areas that he's not sure about, and when he makes guesses, he clearly lays out his reasons.
The tone King takes sheds an enormous amount of light on the Renaissance Vatican, on the technicalities of fresco, on rivalries between painters, and on the connections between art, religion and politics in the 1500s. In the end (perhaps intentionally) he does a much better job exploring the character of the ceiling, than he does the characters of either Michelangelo or Julius.
While generally interesting, there were definitely points where the detail got a little tiring. In general, the slowest parts were toward the beginning of the book, with it really picking up steam toward the end.
The other major flaw I found was the lack of decent illustrations. Granted this is more an issue with the book's production than its authorship. While the narrative does an excellent job of describing Michelangelo's effort (as well as Rafael's), the book itself shows almost no illustration of that effort. I was left squniting at half-inch high panel illustrations trying to discern details being described in the text. I recommend that anyone approaching this book does so with a good print nearby.
In all, I certainly found it informative and engaging, and feel like I left the book with significantly more appreciation for not only the Sistine Chapel, but Renaissance art as a whole.
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