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Michelangelo
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born near Florence in 1475 and died at Rome in 1564. Into these eighty-nine years were crammed a life full of excitement and a most astonishing productivity. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel might almost seem a life's work in itself - but for Michelangelo it was only an interruption in the serious business of getting on with his sculpture. So, too, were the "Last Judgement" and the Cappella Paolina frescoes - all damaged though they are now by time and mortal enemies (for Michelangelo was a man who made enemies as easily as he made friends) but all, to this day, monuments of the art of fresco painting. And all done against the artist's deepest desire, at the insistence of the bishops of Rome - for if ever a man was plagued by popes, it was Michelangelo.
Nor did he fare too well at the hands of the secular Medici. He several times found himself in flight - from the wrath of the popes, or from his own wrath with the popes, or from the uncertainties of the Florentine wars. Once, when the Medici returned in triumph, he stood in imminent danger of death or imprisonment at their hands.
Walter Pater never stood in danger, imminent or otherwise, of death or imprisonment at the hands of power-lustful autocrats. He was born in 1839 and spent most of his uneventful life in the cloistered silence of Victorian Oxford - a silence that was shattered only occasionally, when, after a prolonged bout of conscience, a man decided to change his religion. Pater died in 1894, in his mid-fifties, never having heard the clang of battle - or, very likely, a voice raised in anger. Yet between Michelangelo and Pater there are curious affinities - not the least of which is their common passion for solitude - and Pater's essay on the artist, which is reproduced here, along with 74 magnificent colour plates of Michelangelo's work, is full of interest and penetrating insight. It forms a spendidly written and fascinating companion to the pictures.
Nor did he fare too well at the hands of the secular Medici. He several times found himself in flight - from the wrath of the popes, or from his own wrath with the popes, or from the uncertainties of the Florentine wars. Once, when the Medici returned in triumph, he stood in imminent danger of death or imprisonment at their hands.
Walter Pater never stood in danger, imminent or otherwise, of death or imprisonment at the hands of power-lustful autocrats. He was born in 1839 and spent most of his uneventful life in the cloistered silence of Victorian Oxford - a silence that was shattered only occasionally, when, after a prolonged bout of conscience, a man decided to change his religion. Pater died in 1894, in his mid-fifties, never having heard the clang of battle - or, very likely, a voice raised in anger. Yet between Michelangelo and Pater there are curious affinities - not the least of which is their common passion for solitude - and Pater's essay on the artist, which is reproduced here, along with 74 magnificent colour plates of Michelangelo's work, is full of interest and penetrating insight. It forms a spendidly written and fascinating companion to the pictures.
138 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1969
About the author
Walter Pater
145 books131 followersPeople know British writer Walter Horatio Pater for his volumes of aesthetic criticism, including
Appreciations
(1889).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_...
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