Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling

Ross King offers a fascinating look at the Italian Renaissance through the saga of the painting of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. King's use of detail and description enriches the journey through the art, politics, and personal rivalries that encompass both painters and popes. Reader Alan Sklar is an engaging guide as he immerses listeners in the world of the brilliant, yet difficult Michelangelo. Sklar's clear Italian brings a fluid handling of the many names. His accent is so precise and careful that it's a language lesson. Using a respectful pace, Sklar allows listeners time to absorb the many details--the complexity of fresco painting, or the byzantine negotiations over papal commissions. Intriguing armchair travel, or a fine companion to a visit to Italy. R.F.W. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

November 11, 2002
When Pope Julius II saw Michelangelo's Pietà, he determined to have his grand tomb made by the artist. Summoned from Florence to Rome in 1508, Michelangelo found himself on the losing side of a competition between architects and the victim of a plot "to force a hopeless task" upon him—frescoing the vault of the Sistine Chapel. How the sculptor met this painterly challenge is the matter of this popular account, which demythologizes and dramatizes without hectoring or debasing. Forget cinematic images of Charlton Heston flat on his back—Michelangelo's "head tipped back, his body bent like a bow, his beard and paintbrush pointing to heaven, and his face spattered with paint" is excruciating enough to sustain the legend. King (Brunelleschi's Dome) re-creates Michelangelo's day-to-day world: the assistants who worked directly on the Sistine Chapel, the continuing rivalry with Raphael and the figures who had much to do with his world if not his art (da Vinci, Savonarola, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Martin Luther, Erasmus), including the steely Julius II. King makes the familiar fresh, reminding the reader of the "novelty" of Michelangelo's image of God and how "completely unheard of in previous depictions of the ancestors of Christ" was his use of women. Technical matters (making pigments, foreshortening) are lucidly handled. The 16 color and 30 b&w illustrations were not seen by PW, but should add further specifics to a nicely grounded piece of historical dramatization. (Jan.)Forecast:Walker has been become extremely adept at spotting and packaging books in the
Longitude mode—works that focus on a single significant cultural product, be it cod or a work of art. As an alternate selection of Book-of-the-Month, History and Quality Paperback Book Clubs, this should do even better than
Brunelleschi's Dome, as its subject is better known in the U.S.