Michelangelo: His Life, Work and Times

by Linda Murray

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475 – 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, the versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian, Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo's works in every field was prodigious. When the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, he also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of Saint Peter's Basilica In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime. Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one").One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.

Genres: Art

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Linda Murray, née Bramley, was born in Kent in 1913 and died in Farmoor (near Oxford) in 2004.

A Renaissance scholar, she was the daughter of J. F. Bramley, an exporter, and Hélène Marie Blanche Manso di Villa. She was educated principally by her mother, preferring to travel with them rather than attend boarding school. French and English were her native tongues; she rapidly learned Spanish and Italian. She studied painting at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. During World War II Bramley worked for the U.S. High Command in London where her skill as an artist was put to work drawing maps of the damage from bombing raids on the continent. She moved to Eisenhower’s staff engaged in intelligence. After the war she entered the Courtauld Institute where her classmates included Oliver Millar (q.v.) and Peter Murray (q.v.). She married Murray in 1947. As Linda Murray, she began teaching in London University’s department of extramural studies in 1949. Although she taught a variety of subjects, her medieval architecture classes and tours were especially popular. In 1952 she and her husband, now a lecturer at the Courtauld, channeled their pedagogical energies into two support works of art history, a translation, Classic Art: An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance, by Heinrich Wölfflin (q.v.), and the Dictionary of Art and Artists. The Dictionary established their collaborative working method: dividing the research and write up between them and then passing it to the other for revision. The Dictionary was an immediate success and pair became the most famous "art history couple" in the modern age...

Read more via the Dictionary of Art Historians.

Reviews

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michelangelo was born in 1475 as the Renaissance was nearing its end and along with Leonardo and Raphael he provided the capstone of genius for that era. In Michelangelo's case his mastery spanned both painting and sculpture with the examples of the Sistine Chapel and the sculpture of David as two of his works that transcend the era as monuments to human civilization.
This biographical study highlights the important details of his life within the context of the society of his time. With more than 250 illustrations the book is an excellent introduction to one of the greatest minds of the era and greatest artists of all time.

[Simonfletcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview, especially the historic aspect of his life, but we didn't manage to get very close to who the artist really was.

[Nancy Waggoner · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enormous work of pictures and biography.