Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine

New York: Vendome Press, 2010. BL4 - A first US edition hardcover book SIGNED and inscribed by author to previous owner on the title page in very good condition in very good dust jacket. Book lightly cocked and bowed, some bumped corners and cover edgewear, dust jacket and book have some light discoloration and shelf wear. 9.5"x6.5", 271 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine is the most important biography of Michelangelo to appear in modern times, a long-awaited and authoritative reinterpretation of the early life and career of arguably the greatest artist in history. Author John T. Spike surveys Michelangelo's early life from birth to his early thirties, probing the thinking, artistic evolution, and yearnings of a young man thoroughly convinced of his own exceptional talent. Spike's biography covers the full range of Michelangelo's early years and explores the overwhelming influence that his charismatic personality had upon his contemporaries and followers. Spike traces Michelangelo's development into a master sculptor - the creator at a very young age of the Pieta and the David - probes his involvement in the most troubling controversies of his age, and recreates Florence and Rome with vivid sketches of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Leonardo, Julius II, and Machiavelli, for Michelangelo knew them all. Over the arc of his artistic development, from 1475 to 1508, Michelangelo was an eyewitness to the bonfire of the vanities, the Rome of the Borgias, the siege of Florence, and the burning of Savonarola at the stake. Against an uncertain background of intermittent warfare and mercurial artistic patrons, Michelangelo's unrelenting ambition and exceptional talent drove him to create marble and painted masterpieces that are synonymous with the highest achievements of the Italian Renaissance. Now, from the author of landmark books on Masaccio and Caravaggio comes Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine, a prodigiously informative and compelling account that will fulfill the need for a major Michelangelo biography for his generation and many to come.. Signed by Author. First US Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.