MICHELANGELO

The life of one of the most revolutionary artists in history, told through the story of six of his greatest masterpieces.

Among the immortals—Leonardo, Rembrandt, Picasso—Michelangelo stands alone as a master of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He was not only the greatest artist in an age of giants, but a man who reinvented the practice of art itself. Throughout his long career he clashed with patrons by insisting that he had no master but his own demanding muse and promoting the novel idea that it was the artist, rather than the lord who paid for it, who was creative force behind the work.

Miles Unger narrates the astonishing life of this driven and difficult man through six of his greatest masterpieces. Each work expanded the expressive range of the medium, from the Pietà Michelangelo carved as a brash young man, to the apocalyptic Last Judgment, the work of an old man tested by personal trials. Throughout the course of his career he explored the full range of human possibility. In the gargantuan David he depicts Man in the glory of his youth, while in the tombs he carved for the Medici he offers a sustained meditation on death and the afterlife. In the Sistine Chapel ceiling he tells the epic story of Creation, from the perfection of God’s initial procreative act to the corruption introduced by His imperfect children. In the final decades of his life, his hands too unsteady to wield the brush and chisel, he exercised his mind by raising the soaring vaults and dome of St. Peter’s in a final tribute to his God.

A work of deep artistic understanding, Miles Unger’s Michelangelo brings to life the irascible, egotistical, and undeniably brilliant man whose artistry continues to amaze and inspire us after 500 years.

Miles Unger is the author of two books on Renaissance Italy - Machiavelli: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 2011) and Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de' Medici (Simon & Schuster, 2008). He is also the author of The Watercolors of Winslow Homer (W. W. Norton & Co, 2001). From 1999-2010, he was a contributing writer for The New York Times. From 1996-2002 he served as the Managing Editor of Art New England. He has written for numerous national and regional publications, including The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and ARTnews. Miles Unger's extensive knowledge and love of the Italian language and culture was fostered during the five years he lived in Florence. He continues to travel as often as he can to the country. Miles currently lives near Boston with his wife, Jody, and two daughters, Emily and Rachel.