Product Description

In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The thirty-three-year-old Michelangelo had very little experience of the physically and technically taxing art of fresco; and, at twelve thousand square feet, the ceiling represented one of the largest such projects ever attempted. Nevertheless, for the next four years, he and a hand-picked team of assistants laboured over the vast ceiling, making thousands of drawings and spending back-breaking hours on a scaffold fifty feet above the floor. The result was one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. This fascinating book tells the story of those four extraordinary years and paints a magnificent picture of day-to-day life on the Sistine scaffolding - and outside, in the upheaval of early sixteenth-century Rome.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94805 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
"* 'Ross King deftly stitches modern Michelangelo scholarship into his fluent and gripping narrative. The result is a delightful book that overturns many legends.' - Independent * 'A fascinating and carefully researched account of day-to-day life atop the Sistine scaffolding.' - The Times * 'A narrative that never falls back on exaggeration or deviates from the facts.' - Frank Whitford, Sunday Times * 'We learn an enormous amount by reading this book; King's grasp of and research into the period seem all-encompassing.' - Spectator"

Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, 27th November 2002
Ross King deftly stitches modern Michelangelo scholarship into his fluent and gripping narrative

Michael Pye, The Scotsman16th November 2002
Ross King's study of Michelangelo at work in the Sistine Chapel is a fine portrait of a key moment in art history

Customer Reviews

Mr. King Stays on Point
I enjoy reading biographies and Mr. King is one of the better writers when documenting those periods of European History he chooses. He wrote a wonderful book about Brunelleschi, and now offers readers and even more ambitious work on Michelangelo and Pope Julius II. Many writers seem to often stray, and are too sweeping and inclusive of other persons and events that also took place during the time they are documenting. Mr. King gives enough information to keep his subjects and their pursuits in context without diluting the premise of his books.

The painting of the Sistine Chapel may seem like too well worn a subject for another book but the author dispels so many misconceptions about the events that were involved in this creation that his clarifications are worth the read on their own. The book also includes magnificent color plates and numerous black and white drawings that make the book all the more interesting. But the images add to the book, they do not act as a crutch for an author lacking information.

Did Michelangelo paint while lying on his back, the book answers that question by sharing a letter and diagram of Michelangelo that he penned himself sharing the manner by which he worked? Were the frescoed ceiling and vaults designed and painted by Michelangelo on his own, how long did the work really take, and how close did the work come to be handed over to another artist before its completion?

The author also demonstrates the influence and politics that were a daily part of working for The Vatican and this particular Pope. Mr. King will share the discovery and rapid rise of the artist Raphael who was painting at The Vatican simultaneously with Michelangelo. Bramante who was to initiate the rebuilding of St. Peter's Cathedral was also always present, in the shadows or in front, scheming or openly attempting to influence who would gain specific commissions for the Pope. And there is also the famous/infamous Savonarola who held great influence with the artist who painted the 12,000sf ceiling at a time when approving of the doomed holy man could mean death to those who shared his thoughts.

I have no way of knowing which person or architectural marvel Mr. King will turn to next. He explores several fascinating people in this work that would fill several additional books. I only hope that he continues to produce these eminently readable and enjoyable studies of History and her participants.

"I live wearied by stupendous labors�a thousand anxieties."
In his masterful and well researched portrayal of Michelangelo's four-year (1508-1512) effort to fill the 12,000 square foot, vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with new frescoes for Pope Julius II, Ross King examines and places in context the known details of Michelangelo's life, the images he includes in the frescoes, and his relationship with Pope Julius II, called the "terrifying Pope." Michelangelo had tried to avoid this commission. He was a sculptor, not a painter, and Pope Julius II had angered him by postponing his commission to build the Pope's tomb after Michelangelo had bought all the marble.

Unpracticed in the difficult technique of fresco, he accepted the commission reluctantly. Illustrating stories from Genesis in the brightest and most costly pigments available, he created powerful visions of a terrifying and vengeful God in twelve panels, which depict stories of crime and punishment, prophets crying in the wilderness, and doomed sinners facing hanging, beheading, flood, and plague. Halfway through his commission, Michelangelo decided that his earliest, most tumultuous panels were too "busy," with too many figures painted too small, and he changed his style significantly. Beginning with the famous Creation of Adam, he painted simpler, more powerful designs, with larger figures, dramatically foreshortening and contorting them. God, who appears fully robed in classical attire in the early panels, becomes far more vigorous, muscular, and "human" in the later panels, appearing with his chest bare, his poses foreshortened. In his last depictions, he appears to "tumble down" toward the viewer from the ceiling.

Full of fascinating, memorable details, King's text tells how Michelangelo constructed the scaffold for the fresco (which did not require him to lie on his back), how his first panel was ruined by the build-up of salts and efflorescence and six weeks' labor had to be laboriously chipped away, how a child in one panel is "making the fig" (an obscene gesture),and how the fingers of God and Adam at the Creation are not the work of Michelangelo or of his assistants but complete restorations. A "map" of the ceiling allows the reader to locate particular details, though the colored pictures of the ceiling itself, reproduced almost in its entirety, are extremely small.

When the ceiling was completed in 1512, the world was dumbstruck, according to Vasari, and Michelangelo's figures were said to surpass those of the ancient Greeks. Never before had the human form been used with such "astonishing invention and aplomb...or with the brute force of Michelangelo's naked titans." Writing with enthusiasm and insight, in addition to careful scholarship, King tells the intriguing human story of this artwork, which is as fresh and relevant today as it was when it was painted almost six hundred years ago. Mary Whipple

The Misanthrope And The Warrior Pope
Ahhh.....remember Charlton Heston as Michelangelo- all alone, on his back- painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Well, in this very informative and enjoyable book, Ross King quickly clears up those two major misconceptions. Michelangelo was not on his back: the scaffolding was placed 7 feet below the ceiling. Michelangelo painted while standing, reaching overhead, with his back arched. And, he had plenty of help in his glorious enterprise. Michelangelo took on the project with a great deal of reluctance. What he had really been excited to do was the job Pope Julius II had originally had in mind: the sculpting of the Pope's burial tomb. For Michelangelo considered himself to be a sculptor rather than a painter. Though originally trained, in his early teens, as a painter, he had devoted himself almost entirely to sculpting in the nearly 20 year period which had elapsed between his training and receiving the summons from Pope Julius II to begin work on the Sistine Chapel. Additionally, Michelangelo had never before painted a fresco, which is a very tricky process involving painting on wet plaster. (He had once started preparatory work on a fresco project where he was supposed to go "head to head" with Leonardo. Alas, that project never came to fruition!) So, Michelangelo did what any sensible person would do...he hired as assistants artists who had prior experience doing frescoes. Thus begins the fascinating tale of the four year project. Along the way we learn of Renaissance rivalries- Michelangelo had once taunted Leonardo da Vinci in public for having failed in his attempt to cast a giant bronze equestrian statue in Milan. Leonardo gave as good as he got: "He claimed that sculptors, covered in marble dust, looked like bakers, and that their homes were both noisy and filthy, in contrast to the more elegant abodes of painters." There was also the rivalry between Raphael and Michelangelo. The two artists couldn't have been more different- Raphael...handsome, charming, well-mannered and sociable (and a notorious connoisseur of beautiful women); Michelangelo...squat-nosed and surly, pathologically suspicious, seemingly uninterested in anything unrelated to his art. Raphael was at work on a fresco in the Pope's library, in another section of the Vatican, at the same time Michelangelo was working on the Sistine Chapel. One of the most interesting parts of the book occurs when the ceiling is halfway completed. All the scaffolding was removed so that the Pope could examine the work to date. This was also the first time that Michelangelo could get an idea of how the ceiling would look from the floor of the chapel. He is said to have been shocked at how small his figures looked, and when he started work on the second half of the ceiling he decreased the number of figures portrayed but increased their size by an average of four feet. It is also said that at this time Raphael, realizing how much more public and prestigious the Sistine Chapel project was than his own assignment in the Pope's library, lobbied to be allowed to do the second half of the ceiling. Of course, that never came to pass. Mr. King manages to incorporate an amazing amount of material into such a relatively small book: we learn about the complexities of fresco painting, especially on a concave surface; what materials the pigments were made of and the processes involved in making them; Michelangelo's lack of interest in adding realistic landscapes to the backgrounds of his compositions (he considered landscape painting to be an inferior form of art); his sense of humor- in one of the tableaus he has a character "making the fig" at another character (an Italian equivalent of giving someone the finger). The author also shows us the difficult relationships Michelangelo had with his father and brothers (they were always hitting him up for money or trying to get him to use his influence to get them jobs, etc.). And, as a change-of-pace, punctuating the entire book we have Pope Julius II, famous for his bad temper and foul mouth, going out on various military campaigns to punish wayward Italian city-states...and dragging along his reluctant cardinals! Somehow, Mr. King manages to weave all this together into a seamless, smoothly flowing narrative. This is an excellent book, both educational and entertaining!