A new biography of Michelangelo by Martin Gayford, the acclaimed
author of Constable in Love and The Yellow House.
There was an epic sweep to Michelangelo's life. At 31 he was considered
the finest artist in Italy, perhaps the world; long before he died at
almost 90 he was widely believed to be the greatest sculptor or painter
who had ever lived (and, by his enemies, to be an arrogant, uncouth,
swindling miser). For decade after decade, he worked near the dynamic
centre of events: the vortex at which European history was changing from
Renaissance to Counter Reformation. Few of his works - including the
huge frescoes of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, the marble giant David
and The Last Judgment - were small or easy to accomplish. Like a hero
of classical mythology - such as Hercules, whose statue Michelangelo
carved in his youth - he was subject to constant trials and labours. In
Michelangelo Martin Gayford describes what it felt like to be
Michelangelo Buonarroti, and how he transformed forever our notion of
what an artist could be.
'An absorbing book, beautifully told and with the writer fully in
command of a huge body of research' Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday
'It is a measure of [Michelangelo's] magnitude, and Gayford's skill
in capturing it, that you finish this book wishing that Michelangelo had
lived longer and created more' Rachel Spence, FT
'One of our most distinguished writers on what makes modern artists
tick . . . It is very difficult to cut through the thicket of
generations of scholarship and say anything new about David, the Sistine
Chapel, The Last Judgement, the Basilica of St Peter's or many of
Michelangelo's other masterpieces, but Gayford manages to do so by
encouraging us to think - and look - at both the obvious and the
overlooked' Sunday Telegraph
'Only the most ambitious biographer can take on the talent of
Michelangelo Buonarroti' The Times
Martin Gayford has been art critic of the Spectator and the Sunday
Telegraph. He is currently Chief European art critic for Bloomberg.
Among his publications are: The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin and
Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles, The Penguin Book of Art Writing, of
which he was co-editor, Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a
Portrait by Lucian Freud, and contributions to many catalogues. He
lives in Cambridge with his wife and two children.
