
An unparalleled career ended in 1564, when Michelangelo Buonarroti died in Rome at the age of eighty-nine. When a worldwide commemoration of the event was held four hundred years later, Frederick Hartt conceived of the present volume of Michelangelo's paintings and the two companion volumes devoted to Michelangelo's sculpture and drawings. All three are illustrated with large colorplates and many sizable black-and-white reproductions; together, they constitute a truly impressive tribute to one of the world's greatest artists.
In Michelangelo's career, which was continuously devoted to sculpture, painting occurred-one might say, erupted-sporadically. Once launched as an artist, he painted only at the behest of three Renaissance Popes.
These patrons, too great to be refused, demanded works on a herculean scale for the Vatican-the vast ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the enormous Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, the mighty frescoes of the Pauline Chapel.
Other painters have covered as many square feet in fresco, but only Michelangelo conceived and created works of such thunderous power, staggering in their depth of meaning and magnificent beauty.
Professor Hartt, Chairman of the Department of Art at the University of Virginia, is among the foremost scholars and writers on Italian art. Completely immersed in the culture of the Renaissance, he offers a long essay and forty-eight vivid commentaries; to these he brings his own insights as well as the fruits of previous generations of research. The reader is privileged to follow Professor Hartt's account of Michelangelo's pain-wracked career: we often read the artist's own words and those of his contemporaries, for Michelangelo's titanic genius
—they called it his terribilità-was as evident to his own time as it is to ours. Whether we are led to our first acquaintance with Michelangelo's art or to renew an admiration of long standing, this volume will afford an unforgettable experience.