Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note to the Reader
- Michelangelo - The Artist, the Man and His Times
- PART I
- Introduction
- 1 ROME, 1496
- 2 ARISTOCRAT OF ARTISTS
- 3 RISE TO PROMINENCE
- 4 PAPAL SUMMONS
- 5 ROME, 1508–1516
- 6 FLORENCE, 1515–1525
- 7 A WEEK IN THE LIFE
- 8 FLORENCE, 1525–1534
- PART II
- Notes
- Cast of Principal Characters
- Popes During Michelangelo's Life
- Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Works
- Index
- Plate section
2 - ARISTOCRAT OF ARTISTS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note to the Reader
- Michelangelo - The Artist, the Man and His Times
- PART I
- Introduction
- 1 ROME, 1496
- 2 ARISTOCRAT OF ARTISTS
- 3 RISE TO PROMINENCE
- 4 PAPAL SUMMONS
- 5 ROME, 1508–1516
- 6 FLORENCE, 1515–1525
- 7 A WEEK IN THE LIFE
- 8 FLORENCE, 1525–1534
- PART II
- Notes
- Cast of Principal Characters
- Popes During Michelangelo's Life
- Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Works
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
In retrospect one's life is subject to invention and distortion. Documentation is often scanty, and what survives rarely predicts a famous life. Indeed, fame begins with the mundane: a messy birth, a crying baby, health and sickness, parents, family, schooling. Later, we consciously and unconsciously edit our lives: saving some papers, throwing much away; telling and retelling certain stories and suppressing much more. By the time a biographer relates a life, much of it has faded into well-tailored memory, an open arena for creative retelling or outright invention.
The first surviving letter from Michelangelo's hand, as we have seen, is the one he wrote from Rome in 1496, and which, thanks to its rich detail, permits us to reconstruct the artist's first days in the Eternal City. In contrast, by age twenty-one, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley had written more than two hundred letters. For the first two decades of Michelangelo's life, we are forced to rely on a few documents, less than a half-dozen letters, and the adulatory biographies of his first champions, Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi.
“UNDER A FATEFUL STAR”
Shortly after the birth of his second son, Lodovico Buonarroti made a record, dating it according to Florentine practice:
I record that on this day, March 6th, 1474 [hence, 1475], a male boy was born to me. I gave him the name Michelagnolo; and he was born Monday morning, about 4 or 5 hours before daybreak; and he was born to me, I being the podestà of Caprese, and he was born at Caprese, and the godparents are these here named. […]
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- Information
- MichelangeloThe Artist, the Man and his Times, pp. 28 - 49Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009