Provides a critical analysis of the events, ideas, and individuals who influenced Michelangelo's personal and creative life, profiling the three men who had a profound impact on his art--his father Lodovico Buonarroti, Lorenzo di Medici, and Pope Julius I

Introduces Michelangelo's life, character, and most important works of art throught illustrations and text in prose and verse.

Profiles the life of Italian artist and sculptor Michelangelo, well known for his marble statue of David and his painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

It was Michelangelo's talent and imagination that created the Pieta, the famous statue of David, and the Sistine Chapel's ceilings. What was his life like before he became famous? Readers discover the story of Michelangelo Buonarroti, a man who sculpted with materials others abandoned, whose first official piece of art was really a fraud, and who hid his own likeness in many of his paintings. This artistic genius was as fascinating as he was skilled, and his life is presented to readers through engaging main text and sidebars, annotated quotes from art historians, and examples of his most famous works.

A Journey into Michelangelo's Rome follows Michelangelo from his arrival in Rome in 1496 to his death in the city almost seventy years later. It tells the story of Michelangelo's meteoric rise and artistic breakthroughs, of his tempestuous relations with powerful patrons, and of his austere but passionate private life. Each chapter focuses on a particular work that stunned his contemporaries and continues to impress today's visitors. From the tender sorrow of his sculpted Piet, to the civic elegance of his restoration of Capitoline Hill, to the grandeur of his dome atop St. Peter's, Michelangelo's work adorns the city in numerous ways.

From the acclaimed author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Leonardo and the Last Supper, the riveting story of how Michelangelo, against all odds, created the masterpiece that has ever since adorned the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Despite having completed his masterful statue David four years earlier, he had little experience as a painter, even less working in the delicate medium of fresco, and none with challenging curved surfaces such as the Sistine ceiling's vaults. The temperamental Michelangelo was himself reluctant: He stormed away from Rome, incurring Julius's wrath, before he was eventually persuaded to begin. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the fascinating story of the four extraordinary years he spent laboring over the twelve thousand square feet of the vast ceiling, while war and the power politics and personal rivalries that abounded in Rome swirled around him. A panorama of illustrious figures intersected during this time-the brilliant young painter Raphael, with whom Michelangelo formed a rivalry; the fiery preacher Girolamo Savonarola and the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus; a youthful Martin Luther, who made his only trip to Rome at this time and was disgusted by the corruption all around him. Ross King blends these figures into a magnificent tapestry of day-to-day life on the ingenious Sistine scaffolding and outside in the upheaval of early-sixteenth-century Italy, while also offering uncommon insight into the connection between art and history.