Throughout his long life, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475?1564) never ceased to practice drawing with pen, pencil, or chalk. In the 60 years of creative activity encompassed by this volume, the artist produced scores of sketches, drawings, and studies ? nudes, heads, figure studies, Madonnas, anatomical drawings, studies of children and animals, mythical representations, and religious works. This book reproduces 46 of his finest drawings, embodying most of his artistic themes and techniques, and executed in his characteristic media of pen and ink, and red and black chalk. The extraordinary strength, grace, and clarity of his renderings are beautifully illustrated on every page. The compositions, carefully reproduced on fine-quality paper, range from youthful studies modeled after ancient sculpture and early Renaissance frescoes to the otherworldly religious creations of his old age. Many are preliminary drawings executed in connection with some of his most important commissions: the marble David of 1501?04; the famous cartoon of 1504 for the projected fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio, The Battle of Cascina; the paintings on the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, executed 1508?12; and the imposing fresco of The Last Judgment in the same chapel, executed 1535?14; as well as several of the more highly finished allegorical presentation drawings of the early 1530s. In some cases, e.g. The Battle of Cascina, the drawings are all that remain of a lost masterpiece. All drawings are accompanied by brief descriptive captions including date, medium, size, and current location.

Consummate painter, draftsman, sculptor, and architect, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was celebrated for his disegno, a term that embraces both drawing and conceptual design, which was considered in the Renaissance to be the foundation of all artistic disciplines. To his contemporary Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo was “the divine draftsman and designer” whose work embodied the unity of the arts. Beautifully illustrated with more than 350 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and architectural views, this book establishes the centrality of disegno to Michelangelo’s work. Carmen C. Bambach presents a comprehensive and engaging narrative of the artist’s long career in Florence and Rome, beginning with his training under the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio and the sculptor Bertoldo and ending with his seventeen-year appointment as chief architect of Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. The chapters relate Michelangelo’s compositional drawings, sketches, life studies, and full-scale cartoons to his major commissions—such as the ceiling frescoes and the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, the church of San Lorenzo and its New Sacristy (Medici Chapel) in Florence, and Saint Peter’s—offering fresh insights into his creative process. Also explored are Michelangelo’s influential role as a master and teacher of disegno, his literary and spiritual interests, and the virtuoso drawings he made as gifts for intimate friends, such as the nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna, the marchesa of Pescara. Complementing Bambach’s text are thematic essays by leading authorities on the art of Michelangelo. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, and richly illustrated, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of this timeless artist.

Focuses on the drawings of the artist famous for his sculptures and his work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling

"Michelangelo: Mind of the Master will be published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same title, on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art from 09/22/2019 to 01/05/2020 and the J. Paul Getty Museum from 02/25 to 06/07/2019. The exhibition has been organized in collaboration with the Teylers Museum and features works from its collection"--

The fame and influence of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) were as immediate as they were unprecedented. It is not surprising, therefore, that he was the only living artist Giorgio Vasari included in the first edition of Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in 1550. Revised and expanded in 1568, Vasari’s monumental work comprises more than two hundred biographies; for centuries it has been recognized as a seminal text in art history and one of the most important sources on the Italian Renaissance. Vasari’s biography of Michelangelo, the longest in his Lives, presents Michelangelo’s oeuvre as the culminating achievement of Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture. He tells the grand story of the artist’s expansive career, profiling his working habits; describing the creation of countless masterpieces, from the David to the Sistine Chapel ceiling; and illuminating his relationships with popes and other illustrious patrons. A lifelong friend, Vasari also quotes generously from the correspondence between the two men; the narrative is further enhanced by an abundance of colorful anecdotes. The volume’s forty-two illustrations convey the range and richness of Michelangelo’s art. An introduction by the scholar David Hemsoll traces the textual development of Vasari’s Lives and situates his biography of Michelangelo in the broader context of Renaissance art history.

This major new biography recounts the extraordinary life of one of the most creative figures in Western culture, weaving together the multiple threads of Michelangelo’s life and times with a brilliant analysis of his greatest works. The author retraces Michelangelo’s journey from Rome to Florence, explores his changing religious views and examines the complicated politics of patronage in Renaissance Italy. The psychological portrait of Michelangelo is constantly foregrounded, depicting with great conviction a tormented man, solitary and avaricious, burdened with repressed homosexuality and a surplus of creative enthusiasm. Michelangelo’s acts of self-representation and his pivotal role in constructing his own myth are compellingly unveiled. Antonio Forcellino is one of the world’s leading authorities on Michelangelo and an expert art historian and restorer. He has been involved in the restoration of numerous masterpieces, including Michelangelo’s Moses. He combines his firsthand knowledge of Michelangelo’s work with a lively literary style to draw the reader into the very heart of Michelangelo’s genius.

"In a series of elegant, often provocative essays covering the entire are of Michelangelo's visual signing, Barkan's analytic perspective elicits new connections and new levels of significance that have eluded his predecessors. Thanks to Barkan, future students of Michelangelo's graphic work will have to look and think harder.---Irving Lavin, professor emernus, Institute for Advanced Study --

In late 1504 and early 1505, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) were both at work on commissions they had received to paint murals in Florence's City Hall. Leonardo was to depict a historic battle between Florence and Milan, Michelangelo one between Florence and Pisa. Though neither project was ever completed, the painters' mythic encounter shaped art and its history in the decades and centuries that followed. This concise, lucid, and thought-provoking book looks again at the one moment when Leonardo and Michelangelo worked side by side, seeking to identify the roots of their differing ideas of the figure in 15th-century pictorial practices and to understand what this contrast meant to the artists and writers who followed them. Through close investigation of these two artists, Michael W. Cole provides a new account of critical developments in Italian Renaissance painting.