 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com Michelangelo as never seen before Before reaching the tender age of thirty, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) had already sculpted David and Pièta, two of the most famous sculptures in the entire history of art. Like fellow Florentine Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was a shining star of the Renaissance and a genius of consummate virtuosity. His achievements as a sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and architect are unique--no artist before or after him has ever produced such a vast, multi-faceted, and wide-ranging oeuvre. Only a handful of other painters and sculptors have attained a comparable social status and enjoyed a similar artistic freedom. This is demonstrated not only by the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel but also by Michelangelo's monumental sculptures and his unconventional architectural designs, whose forms went far beyond the accepted vocabulary of his day. Such was his talent that Michelangelo was considered a demigod by his contemporaries and was the subject of two biographies during his lifetime. Adoration of this remarkable man's work has only increased on the intervening centuries. This sumptuous tome also takes account, to a previously unseen extent, of Michelangelo's more personal traits and circumstances, such as his solitary nature, his thirst for money and commissions, his miserliness, his immense wealth, and his skill as a property investor. In addition, the book tackles the controversial issue of the attribution of Michelangelo drawings, an area in which decisions continue to be steered by the interests of the art market and the major collections. This is the definitive volume about Michelangelo for generations to come. Average Customer Rating:  
Michelangelo (XL Series)
| Customer Rating: | | This is a masterpiece! A beautifully illustrated and written book that will inspire everyone, even those not interested in reading or in Michelangelo. The cover is mesmerizing and will draw you to open the book. It makes a statement in your bookshelf or on your coffee table - a wonderful book for the creative person in your life. |
Michelangelo
| Customer Rating: | | I thought the Michelangelo XL series book to be the next best thing from the actual Vatican. Its full of his famous works and true in colors just as I recall it to be. I'm very happy with my purchase from Amazon I've told all of my friends about this amazing book. |
Outstanding details of frescoes; missing key sculptures
| Customer Rating:  | Excellent pictures of the frescoes, inadequate coverage of sculptures. This book is unrivaled for the sheer size of its reproductions. It is so huge that it is a bit difficult to read--one has to rest it on a table. Not suitable for reading in bed, to say the least. But the quality of the printing and colors in the main part of the book is first class. Its coverage is especially fine on the paintings. It comprehensively covers the Sistine Chapel with huge-size foldout prints of every fresco. There are fine close-ups of important areas, which are an amazing 2/3 of life size. One can examine these fresco details from a foot away--never before possible--instead of from 60 feet away with a craned neck. This can be breathtaking.
The sculpture photos are excellent too, but not numerous. I had been expecting several photos of each sculpture from various angles. Bacchus, Pieta, and David are well shown in multiple views but this is not the case for most works.
The text is on the whole very well written and illuminating.
The authors have extreme views on authenticity. This leads them to exclude very important sculptures because, it appears, the authors consider them unproven to be authentic. For example, the Santo Spirito wooden crucifix is shown only small, poor quality, and in black and white. (A far better, color, picture, can be found, free, in Wikipedia.) Even the Madonna and Child bas-relief that is his first work, the one selected to adorn the cover of the 1,000 euro ($1,500) La Dotta Mano book, and, worst of all, the four Slave sculptures, some of his most iconic works, are also relegated to poor quality black-and-whites at back of the book, as all are judged suspect by these authors. Drawings, however, if of doubful authenticity, or even known to be copies, escape this rigorous exclusion. So we have too many drawings and missing sculptures.
Some paintings receive the same relegation: the Manchester Madonna (which is clearly at least in part by Michelangelo) is hardly visible in a tiny, dark, picture, as is the Entombment (which I must agree is of doubtful authenticity).
A book claiming to be comprehensive should have more detailed and thorough illustrations of questioned works than this. Opinions change over the years and some of these will doubtless be accepted in the future. In some cases it seems that the authors are among a minority who dispute authenticity.
The book has a very large number of drawings, but the coarser paper in that section of the book, and the low contrast and low resolution and small size (even in this monster book) of their printing, makes them hard to see clearly. This section is in sharp contrast to the wonderful beauty of the fresco reproductions in the first section of this book. It would have been better to show fewer drawings at a larger size, and illustrate the sculptures properly.
Nevertheless, this is a truly outstanding book for the frescoes, and the photos of the sculptures that are shown and the text are excellent too. Worth its price. |
extraordinary in paintings, drawings printed in poor quality, poor in sculptures
| Customer Rating: | | this book is extraordinary for the paintings; the drawings are documented, but its print quality is rather low, even the quality of paper they are printed on is inferior... and THIS IS A VERY DISAPPOINTING BOOK FOR THE SCULPTURES |
Michelangelo (XL Series)
| Customer Rating: | | Wonderful inside and out. No further commentes are necessary: by all means, buy it !! |
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