Discover Michelangelo

I stumbled upon Michelangelo and caught a glimpse of his “stairway to heaven”. Now it’s your turn.Read about his fascinating life and work and see whether you would agree with his first biographer andfriend, who called him “God’s gift to man”.Did you know that when Michelangelo was a boy a duke invited him to live in his palace to learnhow to carve stone but also to sit with his noble sons at table and during their classes? They had thebest teachers in the country. Michelangelo carved his giant figure of David from a big block of marblethat nobody wanted because it had a big hole in it. In eighteen months, he finished one of the greateststatues there ever was. He and Leonardo da Vinci knew and disliked each other “intensely”. The TownHall of Florence actually commissioned a painting for its walls from both of them and there was a kindof contest. Who do you think won?Though Michelangelo was a sculptor, a pope ordered him to decorate the five-hundred-square-meterceiling of the Sistine Chapel. “But I’m not a painter, Your Holiness,” replied Michelangelo. The Popeinsisted and Michelangelo worked there for four years while painting the most impressive paintings noone had even seen or imagined.You’ll find dozens of stories like those and, at the end of the book, besides some of my readers’comments, a short biography with many illustrations, and a chronology of his works.I am an American teacher who discovered Michelangelo while having a coffee in the main square ofFlorence, Italy. When I saw the reproduction of Michelangelo’s David at the entrance to the big palace,I couldn’t believe my eyes. In America I had never seen anything that good.While learning all I could about Michelangelo and his time, I created a Wordpress blog and startedwriting dozens of articles to tell everybody the unbelievable facts. The chapters of this book wereoriginally those blog articles and they got a lot of replies from art lovers and even professionals,like painters and sculptors. Their comments on the David, the Pietá, the drunken Bacchus, andMichelangelo’s carving technique instructed us all and turned my information into lively discussions.I ended up changing my opinion about Michelangelo’s last sculpture: the Rondanini Pietà. Maybe youwill too.