A man visited Michelangelo in his studio as he was chipping away with his chisel at a huge shapeless block of marble. He was surrounded by dust and covered in fragments. The man asked Michelangelo wha
From Andy Warhol to Jackson Pollock and Michelangelo, introduce your child to the complete picture of art through the ages and across the world. Featuring the finest works by the greatest artists, it'
Hans Holbein the Younger was the leading artist of the Northern Renaissance, yet his life and work are not nearly as well-documented as those of his contemporaries Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo. T
No artist looms so large in Western consciousness and culture as Michelangelo Buonarroti, the most celebrated sculptor of all time. And no place on earth provides a stone so capable of simulating the
In this vividly written biography, William E. Wallace offers a new view of the artist. Not only a supremely gifted sculptor, painter, architect and poet, Michelangelo was also an aristocrat who firmly believed in the ancient, noble origins of his family. The belief in his patrician status fueled his lifelong ambition to improve his family's financial situation and to raise the social standing of artists. Michelangelo's ambitions are evident in his writing, dress and comportment, as well as in his ability to befriend, influence and occasionally say 'no' to popes, kings and princes. Written from the words of Michelangelo and his contemporaries, this biography not only tells his own stories, but also brings to life the culture and society of Renaissance Florence and Rome. Not since Irving Stone's novel The Agony and the Ecstasy has there been such a compelling and human portrayal of this remarkable yet credible human individual.
B.K.S. Iyengar—hailed as "the Michelangelo of yoga" (BBC) and considered by many to be the most important living yoga master—has spent much of his life introducing the modern world to the ancient prac
Like his Renaissance predecessors Raphael, Michelangelo and Dürer, the young Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) was considered to be a boy genius. This survey of Lawrence’s first twenty-five years tells the
Find out how Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes and how Holbein hid secret images in his paintings. Join in Matisse's colorful dance. Look at the paintings of Bosch
The cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) embodies - more than that of any otherdirector - the substance of European art cinema. Antonioni's films are intensely stylized, stylish,demanding, bea
Do angels make love? Will the souls of ordinary people feel sexual pleasure in the next world? Is the aspiration to spiritual salvation helped or hindered by sexual experience? In Heaven and the Flesh Clive Hart and Kay Stevenson explore the opinions of poets and painters on such questions, from the high Renaissance to the birth of romanticism. Hart and Stevenson analyse the work not only of canonical writers and artists, such as Milton and Michelangelo, but also of lesser-known figures such as John Gore and Richard Tompson, and the sometimes anguished speculations of philosophers and theologians. As the evidence of witty pornographic poems and drawings demonstrates, the relationship between sexual desire and spiritual ascension was not always treated with full seriousness. This wide-ranging survey offers sometimes surprising insights into material both familiar and unfamiliar.
Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo are familiar names that are often closely associated with the concepts of genius and masterpiece. But what about Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Irene di Spilimbengo? Their names are unfamiliar and their works are literally unknown. Why? Defining the Renaissance 'Virtuosa' considers the language of art in relationship to the issues of gender difference through an examination of art criticism written between 1550 and 1800 on approximately forty women artists who were active in Renaissance Italy. Fredrika Jacobs demonstrates how these theoretical writings defined women artists, by linking artistic creation and biological procreation. She also examines the ambiguity of these women as both beautiful object and creator of beautiful object. Jacobs' study shows how deeply the biases of these early critics have inflected both subsequent reception of these Renaissance virtuose, as well as modern scholarship.
The Shocking Secrets of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Artwork The recent cleaning of the Sistine Chapel frescoes removed layer after layer of centuries of accumulated tarnish and darkness. The Sist
"A remarkably rich and provocative set of essays on the virtually infinite kinds of meanings generated by images in both the verbal and visual arts. Ranging from Michelangelo to Velazquez and Delacro
Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Most Famous Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550 and 1568) is a classic of cultural history. A monumental assembly of artists’ lives from Giotto to Michelangelo,
Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante--together these artists created some of the most glorious treasures of the Vatican, viewed daily by thousands of tourists. But how many visitors understand the way thes
Auguste Rodin, the most famous and influential sculptor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is also widely considered to be the successor to Michelangelo, whose genius was a lifelong
Michelangelo's Last Judgment was the most criticized and discussed painting of the sixteenth century. The subject of the Last Judgment has been a barometer of cultural mood throughout history. It can be interpreted, as Michelangelo did, as the moment when mortals attain immortal bliss or, in more unsettled times, as the terrifying moment when we face the justice of the Lord and are found wanting. The painting must hold in tension admonition and celebration. Michelangelo created his fresco in the final flowering of Renaissance humanism. Four years after its unveiling, the Council of Trent began meeting and the Counter-Reformation was under way. Caught on the cusp of a major shift of values, Michelangelo and his fresco were praised by lovers of art and condemned by conservative churchmen who sought a tool with which to exhort the wavering faithful, tempted to defect to Protestantism. This book explores the context, both historical and biographical, in which the fresco was created and the
