Michelangelo Bookstore: Books about Michelangelo, his artistic production and life.                                       

 

 

Amazon.com
The restoration of Michelangelo's magnificent frescoes in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel stirred up much controversy and debate among scholars, art historians, and art lovers alike. Originally painted in the late 15th century, it took restorers 14 painstaking years (from 1981 to 1995) to remove the centuries' worth of dust and decay that had obscured the frescoes' brilliant colors and intricate designs.

 

From Publishers Weekly
Anyone who's experienced neck pain while gazing at the stunning frescoes of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel will see the value in Hall's book. The author, a specialist in Italian Renaissance art, presents revealing commentary to accompany Okamura's 157 dazzling, full-color photographs, which were taken... Read more

 

Amazon.com
Almost 500 years after Michelangelo Buonarroti frescoed the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the site still attracts throngs of visitors and is considered one of the artistic masterpieces of the world. Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling unveils the story behind the art's making, a story rife with all the drama of a modern-day soap opera.

 

 

 

Book Description
Successful merchants and Florence's most prominent patrons of the arts and sciences, the Medici family ruled the city from the fifteenth century until the mid-eighteenth century. This beautiful and authoritative book focuses on the glorious art produced during the height of the reign of the Medici dynasty.

 

Editorial Reviews
Card catalog description
Describes the life of the Italian Renaissance artist and examines some of his paintings and sculptures. --This text refers to the School & Library Binding edition.

 

Book Description
outstanding studies, including sketches for David, Sistine Ceiling, Last Judgment, etc. Nudes, figure studies, children, animals, mythical and religious works, more. New volume in Dover Art Library affords insight into mastery of proportion, anatomy, perspective, shading, contrast. Essential for artists, museum-goers.

 

Amazon.com
Michelangelo Buonarroti, one of the greatest artists of all time, was not exactly a noble and humble man. Irritable, arrogant, and impatient, his perfectionism and expectations drove away many potential friends, and even provoked one would-be friend to hit him in the nose, crushing it "like a ... Read more

 

 

From Booklist
Michelangelo produced three sculptures of the Madonna holding the dead Christ in her lap, called the Pieta. The first (1498-99) is at St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. The second (ca.1550) is at the Museo Civico in Milan. The third, called the Florence Pieta and the subject of this exciting book, was... Read more

 

From Library Journal
Michelangelo's renown as a sculptor and painter is well known, but the extent of his abilities as a poet is less familiar--though it is equally important in understanding his life and thought. Saslow has done a great service in providing a bilingual edition of Michelangelo's complete Rime , some 300... Read more

 

From Publishers Weekly
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1474-1564) contended that his destiny was sealed when he was suckled by a wet nurse who was the daughter of a stonemason. His David, Pieta and Sistine Chapel frescoes brought him renown by his 30s, but the biographer's problem is that he lived into his 90th year. What does one do with the rest of his life? Bull (Inside the Vatican), foreign news editor of the London Financial Times, handles the question as a thorough scholar of Italian art and politics

 

Synopsis
The poems have been rendered into vigorous contemporary English. A selection of Michelangelo's letters, many of them to important contemporaries such as Vasari and Duke Cosimo, is accompanied by the "Life" of the great artist written by his pupil Ascanio Condivi.

 

From Publishers Weekly
The 12 years between the death of Lorenzo de' Medici and the unveiling of the David are "the most dramatic in the history of Florence, and... the most dramatic of Michelangelo's life," according to Gill (Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim). That drama never fully emerges, however, in this... Read more

 

From Library Journal
Any serious art book collection must upgrade its holdings to include recent photographs of the Sistine Chapel after the cleaning, as our understanding of the paintings on the ceiling and walls has since changed radically. Here are three titles complementing one another and various aspects of the images revealed by the restoration. The slender, slipcovered Michelangelo and Raphael is an updated version of the official publication of the Vatican Museum illustrating the Sistine and Pauline chapels... read more

 

From Booklist
The greatest artist of the human figure was also one of Renaissance Italy's greatest poets. Observing the originals' meters and rhyming, though not always according to the original schemes, Nims' translations allow us to appreciate that greatness. Like other Renaissance poets, Michelangelo wrote... Read more

 

 

Amazon.com
The books in the Art and Ideas series, which will cover everything from Fra Angelico to Frida Kahlo, are supremely pleasurable to read. In this volume, for example, Anthony Hughes writes dryly of a Michelangelo sculpture of Christ, which was tinkered with and damaged during installation in March... Read more

 

About the Author
Stefano Zuffi is the author of several important art books, including Art in Venice, Italian Painting, and studies on Duer, Rembrandt, and Titian.

 

Book Description
In her analysis of Michelangelo's Last Judgment, Bernadine Barnes provides an original and stimulating view of this renowned fresco and of the audience for which it was created. Because Michelangelo is so often regarded as a nearly superhuman artistic genius, we tend to forget that his works were not created to illustrate his life.

 

 

From Library Journal
One of the last works by Italian art historian Argan ( The Renaissance City , Braziller, 1969), this is a considered and full treatment of the work Michelangelo most complained about having to do. In addition to the introduction, Argan provides three chapters, covering Florence, Rome, and Saint Peter's. Contardi, a student of Argan, has done the text for the accompanying building entries, discussing thoroughly each of the artist's 30-some projects. The black-and-white photographs are limpid and... read more

 

 

Michelangelo (Caprese del Cansentino 1475-Rome, 1564) is one of the outstanding figures of the Italian Renaissance. He was a poet, sculptor, painter and architect. His architectural activity did not begin until 1519 when he designed the façade of the San Lorenzo church in Florence. In the 1520s he also designed the Laurentian Library. Between 1519 and 1534 he worked on the project of the Medici family tombs and mortuary chapel, and their parish church, San Lorenzo. In 1538, under his supervision, work was started on the remodeling of the buildings around the Capitoline The apex of his architectural achievements was the Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

 

Ingram
A comprehensive study of Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel creations describes its recent restoration, features a double gatefold that illustrates the entire ceiling, and includes a history of the artist and the chapel.

 

From Library Journal
Originally printed in 1953, this edition is the title's sixth incarnation. This update now includes color photographs of the newly cleaned ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. All the original black-and-white images also have been redone for this upgrade.

 

Amazon.com
Few artists in the history of the world have attained the mythic status of Michelangelo--painter of the heavenly Sistine Chapel and sculptor of the nearly divine David. And it is his towering presence that makes it so difficult to imagine the artist as a man. Art historian James Beck helps unlock... Read more

 

 

 

Reading level: Ages 9-12

From School Library Journal
Grade 7-10-These books are devoted not so much to the title artists as to their principal European contemporaries, including the development of their styles and their techniques. The artistic phenomena that preceded the periods as well as major developments in Europe and elsewhere, for example,... Read more

 

Reading level: Ages 4-8

From School Library Journal
Grade 1-3-Highlights of the lives and careers of two Renaissance masters. Two to three lines of text on each page accompany a bright, full-color reproduction, drawing, or photograph. Unfortunately, the texts are oversimplified and the reproductions, while good, are not titled or attributed (even the... Read more

From Publishers Weekly
A nifty historical tidbit inspired this debut picture book: in 1494, after an unusually heavy snowfall, Piero de' Medici had Michelangelo brought to his palazzo to sculpt a snowman. But Sandro, the youngest page in the palazzo, does not know what Signore Piero has in mind when he calls for "Ser... Read more