PDF Download Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King

PDF Download Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King

Getting this book in this internet site could not lead you to walk as well as go to book store. Seeking rack by shelf will really invest your time primarily. Yet, it well not warranties you to be effective finding Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling, By Ross King Hence, you could find it in the soft data of this publication. It will certainly offer you the amazing system of guide recommendation. You can go to the link and most likely to the page making handle. And also currently, your publication filter documents of this can be your selected book and also place to read this intriguing book.

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King

PDF Download Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King

When I'm wanted to check out something, I want to look up at particular publication. And now, I'm still confused of what kind of publication that can assist me make desire of this time. Do you really feel the same? Wait, can everybody inform me just what to opt to entertain my lonely and also spare time? What kind of book is truly advised? Such a tough thing, this is what you as well as I probably really feel when having extra spare time and also have no concept to check out.

As understood, lots of people state that books are the custom windows for the globe. It does not mean that getting book Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling, By Ross King will certainly mean that you can acquire this world. Merely for joke! Checking out a book Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling, By Ross King will certainly opened a person to assume much better, to keep smile, to amuse themselves, as well as to motivate the knowledge. Every e-book also has their unique to affect the reader. Have you understood why you review this Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling, By Ross King for?

By reading this e-book Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling, By Ross King, you will get the best thing to acquire. The brand-new point that you don't have to invest over money to reach is by doing it by yourself. So, what should you do now? Go to the web link web page and download guide Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling, By Ross King You can get this Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling, By Ross King by online. It's so very easy, isn't really it? Nowadays, modern technology really assists you tasks, this on-line book Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling, By Ross King, is as well.

This Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling, By Ross King has the tendency to be what you are needed currently. It will get to get rid of the presence of interesting topic to review. Also many people feel that this is not appropriate for them to review, as a good viewers, you can take into consideration various other reasons. This book is really good to check out. It will not need to force you making representative topic of the books. However, inspirations as well as interest that are provided type this publication can be accomplished to everyone.

Review

“This amazing book transports the listener back to Italy in the early 16th century. King is able to describe the intricacies of fresco painting while also portraying the day-to-day life of that era . . . Highly recommended.” ―Library Journal“A legend-busting, richly detailed account of the four-year making of the Sistine Chapel frescos . . . Readers looking for the lite version of this tale may still want to fire up the VCR and watch Charlton Heston chew the scenery. Those seeking a richer understanding of Renaissance art-making will find this a pleasure.” ―Kirkus“Scrupulously researched, written with panache, Ross King's Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling is a sublime peek into a remarkable era.” ―The Miami Herald“Ross King expertly wipes away such smudges from the story of this great painting, only to uncover a truth even more exciting and improbable.” ―San Francisco Chronicle“[An] exciting account. . . King chronicles Michelangelo's aesthetic decisions and clarion triumphs over myriad forms of adversity with expertise and contagious enthusiasm.” ―Booklist, starred review“Splendid, thorough and detailed.” ―Publishers Weekly

Read more

About the Author

Ross King is the bestselling author of Brunelleschi's Dome: The Story of the Great Cathedral in Florence, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism, Leonardo and The Last Supper, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies and others. His work has won the RBC Taylor Prize, and been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Charles Taylor Prize, and the National Award for Arts Writing. He has lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian, the Aspen Institute, and the Frick Collection, and in Florence, Milan, Paris, and Giverny. He lives near Oxford with his wife, Melanie.

Read more

Product details

Paperback: 384 pages

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; Reprint edition (October 14, 2014)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1620408406

ISBN-13: 978-1620408407

Product Dimensions:

6.1 x 1 x 9.2 inches

Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.3 out of 5 stars

295 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#240,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

As a new art student I've taken a real interest in the lives of artisits. This has been one of the best books so far. What I really liked about this book was the fact you didn't have to know anything about Michelangelo or the time period to enjoy and understand this book. It's more than just the story of the Sistine Chapel, it also goes into the things that were going on around Michelangelo while he was working on it. It also gives you some insight as to how he felt about himself (not the nicest guy) and how his confidence grew inspite of the fact he was competeing with Rapheal (who was a nice guy)and other factors including the weather and the effect it was having on the ceiling. If you want a good all around book on Michelangelo this would be a really good one to start with. My only complaint is it could of had a few more pictures of some of the paintings described in the book.

Pope Julius II was a fastidious man whose eye for the arts was always set on his lofty standards of beauty and perfection that few artists could satisfy. So when the pope saw the Pieta whose beauty surpassed the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures adorning the tomb of a French cardinal, he wanted the same awe-inspiring adornment for his tomb, whereupon one Michelangelo Buonarroti from Florence was summoned for the commission for the work. From then on, that’s how Michelangelo at age thirty-three reluctantly embarked on his Herculean task of frescoing the vault of the Sistine Chapel. This book by Ross King recounts such background stories of the making of the Sistine Chapel frescoes and descriptions of the personal traits of Michelangelo.Michelangelo’s work on the frescoes resulted from part Divine Providence of endowing the humanity with an awe-inspiring masterpiece of art to delight the senses of mankind through the ages and part secular ambitions to mark the names of both the commissioner and the artist themselves. Pope Julius II also wanted to renovate the Sistine Chapel that had been used as a living quarter for the guards, a fortress against papal enemies, and a jail. As no one pours new wine into old wineskins as said in the bible, the pope’s plan to revert the chapel to its original place of worship, which made him drop his tomb project, was met by his idea of frescoing the vault in its entirety. Michelangelo, who was a breadwinner of his family, accepted the commission with sumptuous amount of salary and commenced four-year of labor of woes and dramas on the vault of the chapel.There are revealing truths that should be known concerning the process of frescoing the Sistine Chapel as follows: Contrary to popular belief that Michelangelo did the work while lying prone on his back, he worked with his upper body bent backward like a bow. Also, it wasn’t done by solely by Michelangelo but a work of concerted efforts made by a contingent of his assistants chosen by Francesco Granacci, a close friend of Michelangelo. Michelangelo was innately a solitary worker who had a strong distrust of others who worked with him. As a matter of fact, Michelangelo was never a jolly fellow whose sociability would have endeared him to all, as in the case of his contemporary Raphael Sancti.It is also interesting to pay special notes on the figures Michelangelo used for the frescoes, which shows his ingenuity of selecting unique subject matters distinguished from his contemporaries. To illustrate, he used 7 prophets from the Old Testament and 5 sibyls from pagan myth to decorate the Sistine vaults. He was fascinated with prophetic knowledge of the sibyls who dwelled in sacred shrines and predicted the future in fits of inspired madness. This offered a compelling link between the sacred and the profane, the church and the esoteric pagan culture by reconciling pagan mythology with orthodox Christian teachings.From this book, readers will find that the position of a painter/sculptor was not esteemed highly; he was more of a skilled laborer, a craftsman, given exact orders how to produce his work by his commissioner or patron. As a matter of fact, the image of a solitary genius who would wield his brush and pallets to portray his world of imagination from the fathoms of his soul was a romantic fable. In Michelangelo’s time, an artist’s creativity was fettered by the demands of marketplace or his patron. Nevertheless, Michelangelo often disagreed to the pope’s own artistic direction and even had a temerity of broaching the shipping charges incurred in transporting the marbles from Carrara for the aborted tomb project at a dinner table with the pope .Michelangelo was said to be a man of aesthetically unpleasing appearance without sociability; his direct altercation with Leonardo da Vinci as described in this book was amusing to discover. Both of the masters of the arts did not like each other publicly, but it was on the part of da Vinci who instigated such heated feud. He disregarded sculptors, including Michelangelo, as mechanics in the appearance of unkempt bakers.King’s research into this daunting subject matter is indeed impressive and highly laudable. Reading his account of how Michelangelo worked on his frescoes enabled me to envision the scene very vividly. The descriptions of the streets, alleys, and the Sistine Chapel are realistically rendered as if they were pictures. However, I could not help but feel a subtle tone of anti-papacy or even a remote sense of anti-Catholicism in this book. Evidently, there were corruptions among the church officials, clerics, not to mention the laypersons. But I wonder if King should have spent several chapters about Pope Julius II to discern just what kind of person he was in a negative shadow, the fallacy of his character, of the papacy in general. I ascribe such tendency to culturally transmitted anti-Catholicism in England, a home of the Episcopal Church, from the time of Henry VIII because this is not the first time I recognize such sentiment in English writers.Notwithstanding the above sentiment, the book has its magical way of transporting readers to Italy in the early 16th century and invites readers to meet with Michelangelo as he was in his disheveled hair and untidy outfit dripped with colors from the unfinished fresco. Despite all his personal foibles, he is indeed a person bizarre fantastico whose muscular nudes in frantic but graceful gyrates have both the beauty and the sublime that produce in the spectator a kind of astonished wonder so formidable and so fantastic throughout the ages.

The topic of this book is an artistic and historic blockbuster: Michelangelo's famous frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The author tells the story in great detail -- arguably in too great detail. Every artist and assistant artist and many of their relatives and patrons are given, along with their towns and some of their history -- often with little relevance to the story. This is a lot to wade through and is more than is necessary. Their names are long and hard to pronounce, at least for a non-speaker of Italian. There is a fair amount of repetition as well. For example, we are told at least three times that, contrary to (supposed) popular belief, Michelangelo did not do his painting solo and while lying on his back (as in Irving Stone's "The Agony and the Ecstasy"): He built elaborate scaffolding to make his work and that of his assistants easier. We are told about the sexual reputations of not just Michelangelo (meh) and Raphael (stud), but of many of their friends and associates. This sounds promising but is actually not that explicit and hence a bit disappointing when the book could have used a bit of pizzazz...Arguably, the person who has the most developed and interesting character is not the artist but the man who commissioned him: Pope Julius II -- a domineering and vain and aggressive person, who was perhaps more interested in the power struggles among the Vatican and the Italian city-states (and against France) in the 16th century than in the finer points of the Catholic faith. We never get a definitive idea of how Michelangelo himself felt about Julius -- though it seems negative in balance. We also don't get much info on Michelangelo's attitude toward religion, though it is suggested that he was a believer (with little supporting evidence).Although the book is about Michelangelo as a painter, he considered himself primarily a sculptor (and is perhaps remembered that way). Yet there is not much about his work with stone and its relation to his painting.One of the book's major shortcomings is the lack of good illustrations. There are just a few color plates and not that many black and white ones. I had to go to the Wikipedia entry on the Sistine Chapel to get decent close-ups so I could follow the descriptions in the text. The author should have included at least this link (and probably others that might be even better). The author's analysis of the frescoes artistic features does not seem authoritative and at times seems sketchy. Of course, to be fair, there are plenty of expert analyses to be had.I had previously read the author's "Bruneleschi's Dome" which is more streamlined and easier to digest. "Pope's ceiling" was, though interesting, rather ponderous. Sometimes less is more as they say.

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King PDF
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King EPub
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King Doc
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King iBooks
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King rtf
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King Mobipocket
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King Kindle

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King PDF

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King PDF

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King PDF

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King PDF