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 and friend, 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 learn how to carve stone but also to sit with his noble sons at table and during their classes? They had the best teachers in the country. Michelangelo carved his giant figure of David from a big block of marble that nobody wanted because it had a big hole in it. In eighteen months, he finished one of the greatest statues there ever was. He and Leonardo da Vinci knew and disliked each other “intensely”. The Town Hall of Florence actually commissioned a painting for its walls from both of them and there was a kind of contest. Who do you think won? Though Michelangelo was a sculptor, a pope ordered him to decorate the five-hundred-square-meter ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. “But I’m not a painter, Your Holiness,” replied Michelangelo. The Pope insisted and Michelangelo worked there for four years while painting the most impressive paintings no one 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 of Florence, 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 started writing dozens of articles to tell everybody the unbelievable facts. The chapters of this book were originally 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, and Michelangelo’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 you will too.