Michelangelo – författare

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is universally celebrated as one of the greatest artists of all time, yet iconic Renaissance creator was also a prolific and gifted poet. The verses collected here are primarily devoted to love and religion. Intense and passionate, the love poems focus on two figures: Tommaso de Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna; with the sonnets and madrigals dedicated to de Cavalieri revealing a highly charged, homoerotic fervour - previously obscured in the original versions. Michelangelo's later religious poetry moves away from his earlier wordly concerns, while his letters provide a fasicnating insight into his fanily relations and day-to-day life as a working artist. The result is a revealing picture of one of the towering figures of the Renaissance.

The poems have been rendered into vigorous contemporary English. A selection of Michelangelo's letters, many of the to important contemporaries such as Vasari and Duke Cosimo, is accompanied by the `Life' of the great artist written by his pupil Ascanio Condivi. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Michelangelo studied and wrote poetry throughout his life, and his finest literary efforts are allied with the masterwoks of his visual art, and this translation captures the pathos, complexity, and ardor of both Michelangelo's language and his poetic temperament. The text gives a glimpse into one of the most fascinating minds in the history of art, as Michelangelo laboured in the Sistine Chapel he composed a series of passionate love sonnets and while struggling, near the end of his life, to complete his final "Pieta" he worked at religious poems anguished in their fervour.

Throughout his long life, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) never ceased to practice drawing with pen, pencil, or chalk. In the 60 years of creative activity encompassed by this volume, the artist produced scores of sketches, drawings, and studies – nudes, heads, figure studies, Madonnas, anatomical drawings, studies of children and animals, mythical representations, and religious works. This book reproduces 46 of his finest drawings, embodying most of his artistic themes and techniques, and executed in his characteristic media of pen and ink, and red and black chalk. The extraordinary strength, grace, and clarity of his renderings are beautifully illustrated on every page.The compositions, carefully reproduced on fine-quality paper, range from youthful studies modeled after ancient sculpture and early Renaissance frescoes to the otherworldly religious creations of his old age. Many are preliminary drawings executed in connection with some of his most important commissions: the marble David of 1501–04; the famous cartoon of 1504 for the projected fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio, The Battle of Cascina; the paintings on the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, executed 1508–12; and the imposing fresco of The Last Judgment in the same chapel, executed 1535–14; as well as several of the more highly finished allegorical presentation drawings of the early 1530s. In some cases, e.g. The Battle of Cascina, the drawings are all that remain of a lost masterpiece. All drawings are accompanied by brief descriptive captions including date, medium, size, and current location.

The description for this book, Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo, will be forthcoming.