Michael Hirst's chapters are followed by Jill Dunkerton's survey of Michelangelo's technique as a painter on panel, using both egg tempera and oil paint, based on the investigation of his paintings in the National Gallery. Included in the discussion is Michelangelo's slightly later Doni Tondo in the Uffizi, Florence, his only completed panel painting and one of the most perfect of his works. Dunkerton also looks back to the paintings by Ghirlandaio and his workshop in which Michelangelo was trained. Her illuminating text helps us to understand how Michelangelo executed these two familiar but relatively little-studied paintings and also to envisage the startling finished appearance probably conceived by the artist.

The fame and influence of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) were as immediate as they were unprecedented. It is not surprising, therefore, that he was the only living artist Giorgio Vasari included in the first edition of Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in 1550. Revised and expanded in 1568, Vasari’s monumental work comprises more than two hundred biographies; for centuries it has been recognized as a seminal text in art history and one of the most important sources on the Italian Renaissance. Vasari’s biography of Michelangelo, the longest in his Lives, presents Michelangelo’s oeuvre as the culminating achievement of Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture. He tells the grand story of the artist’s expansive career, profiling his working habits; describing the creation of countless masterpieces, from the David to the Sistine Chapel ceiling; and illuminating his relationships with popes and other illustrious patrons. A lifelong friend, Vasari also quotes generously from the correspondence between the two men; the narrative is further enhanced by an abundance of colorful anecdotes. The volume’s forty-two illustrations convey the range and richness of Michelangelo’s art. An introduction by the scholar David Hemsoll traces the textual development of Vasari’s Lives and situates his biography of Michelangelo in the broader context of Renaissance art history.

Following the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition, the Museum of Fine Arts hosts a show of Michelangelo?s drawings, the other genius of the Italian Renaissance. Drawing played a central role in the art of Michelangelo, who left behind an outstanding legacy mainly as a sculptor but also as a painter and architect. His drawings allow an insight into the creative process of the master?s celebrated works, since he prepared all his creations on paper. This exhibition catalogue is intended primarily for the general public. For this reason, the authors have refrained from debating the sophisticated questions of attribution regarding individual drawings, which are often difficult even for experts to unravel. Similarly, it was not their aim to discuss the uncertainties of dating specific works of art. Their objective was to set the drawings in the broader historical, social, political, or economic context of the period, and the main concern was to address the question of how the cult of Michelangelo, which still influences our judgement of his oeuvre, first manifested itself during his lifetime.00Exhibition: Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary (06.04.-30.06.2019).