This essay celebrating the first printing presses during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy, is included in my most recent book The Modern Salonnière. The 34 other…
View More Saluting the Renaissance Book ClubTag: Michelangelo
Sometimes the way into a person’s story is circuitous and sometimes it is more direct. I take both tacks when researching the narrative of Michelangelo.
Reading the artist’s letters is more like observing a laundry list of pressure-laden responsibilities, familial crises and financial liabilities. I enjoyed much more the image of Michelangelo that Dr. Abigail Brundin painted when exploring his stature through the relationship he had with a woman poet in her book Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation. In it, the professor at St. Catherine’s College Cambridge, wrote, “Michelangelo’s acknowledged position as the foremost visual artist of his generation, patronized by popes and rulers, lent him a ‘star quality’ and a celebrity status that caused many of the most powerful individuals of his generation to seek him out, despite his relatively lowly beginnings. Colonna herself also enjoyed some celebrity status (although at all times, of course, carefully qualified by the limitations appropriate to her sex), as testified to by the frequency and popularity of printed editions of her works.”
Colonna was titled, her rank as the Marchesa di Pescara placing her above Michelangelo in stature but only in terms of birth. They met in Rome sometime between 1536 and 1538 while he was working on the Tomb of Julius II and The Last Judgment. In The Letters of Michelangelo, editor E.F. Ramsden notes three meetings that took place at the church of San Silvestro di Monte Cavallo at Capite during which Michelangelo, Vittoria and Francisco de Holanda—a Portuguese artist—among others discussed cultural topics. The latter left a written account of how Michelangelo and Colonna engaged in serious conversations about the status of art and the role of the artist in society. I present several literary adventures exploring how their relationship might have played out in modern times if you’d like to read more about their bond.
The New Face of Religious Zeal
As I circle the domed space, I approach the front of the pulpit for the third time. I can’t believe how perfect it is that…
View More The New Face of Religious ZealThe Personality of Place
So, this is how it feels to experience a medieval Tuscan village that has existed on a hillside in some form for almost 1000 years!…
View More The Personality of PlaceArchitecture with Heart in Bordeaux
In the preface to the book Grand Bordeaux Châteaux: Inside the Fine Wine Estates of France, Philippe Chaix describes discovering Bordeaux as a bewitching act: on…
View More Architecture with Heart in BordeauxIt Is Time to Experience More
Experience more. It sounds like a simple directive but how many of us really take the time to savor what is happening right in front…
View More It Is Time to Experience MoreGod’s Articulate Finger
Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel In this last entry of the year, I wanted to share a piece of my own creative writing to say…
View More God’s Articulate FingerThe Age of Genius
“Ordinary facts are arranged within time, strung along its length as on a thread,” writes Bruno Schulz in his short story The Age of Genius.…
View More The Age of Genius