Becoming Michelangelo
Regular price
€25.99
16th century
A Life in Six Masterpieces
A01=Alan Pascuzzi
art
art history
artists
Author_Alan Pascuzzi
books on art
books on history
Category=AGA
da Vinci
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
famous artists
Florence
gift for art lover
historical
historical biographies
history
history books for adults
Italian art
Italy
learning from the masters
Leonardo da Vinci
masters of art
men in history
Michelangelo
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Michelangelo Pieta
Mona Lisa
Renaissance
Renaissance Art
Renaissance artists
Renaissance Masters
sixteenth century
The David
The Pieta
Walter Isaacson
Product details
- ISBN 9781628729153
- Weight: 955g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 23 May 2019
- Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Michelangelo’s developing genius is revealed as never before by the man who became Michelangelo’s last apprentice—an American artist and art historian whose family helped carve Mount Rushmore.
Many believe Michelangelo's talent was miraculous and untrained, the product of “divine” genius—a myth that Michelangelo himself promoted by way of cementing his legacy. But the young Michelangelo studied his craft like any Renaissance apprentice, learning from a master, copying, and experimenting with materials and styles. In this extraordinary book, Alan Pascuzzi recounts the young Michelangelo’s journey from student to master, using the artist’s drawings to chart his progress and offering unique insight into the true nature of his mastery.
Pascuzzi himself is today a practicing artist in Florence, Michelangelo’s city. When he was a grad student in art history, he won a Fulbright to “apprentice” himself to Michelangelo: to study his extant drawings and copy them to discern his progression in technique, composition, and mastery of anatomy. Pascuzzi also relied on the Renaissance treatise that “Il Divino” himself would have been familiar with, Cennino Cennini's The Craftsman’s Handbook (1399), which was available to apprentices as a kind of textbook of the period.
Pascuzzi’s narrative traces Michelangelo’s development as an artist during the period from roughly 1485, the start of his apprenticeship, to his completion of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1512. Analyzing Michelangelo’s burgeoning abilities through copies he himself executed in museums and galleries in Florence and elsewhere, Pascuzzi unlocks the transformation that made him great. At the same time, he narrates his own transformation from student to artist as Michelangelo’s last apprentice.
Many believe Michelangelo's talent was miraculous and untrained, the product of “divine” genius—a myth that Michelangelo himself promoted by way of cementing his legacy. But the young Michelangelo studied his craft like any Renaissance apprentice, learning from a master, copying, and experimenting with materials and styles. In this extraordinary book, Alan Pascuzzi recounts the young Michelangelo’s journey from student to master, using the artist’s drawings to chart his progress and offering unique insight into the true nature of his mastery.
Pascuzzi himself is today a practicing artist in Florence, Michelangelo’s city. When he was a grad student in art history, he won a Fulbright to “apprentice” himself to Michelangelo: to study his extant drawings and copy them to discern his progression in technique, composition, and mastery of anatomy. Pascuzzi also relied on the Renaissance treatise that “Il Divino” himself would have been familiar with, Cennino Cennini's The Craftsman’s Handbook (1399), which was available to apprentices as a kind of textbook of the period.
Pascuzzi’s narrative traces Michelangelo’s development as an artist during the period from roughly 1485, the start of his apprenticeship, to his completion of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1512. Analyzing Michelangelo’s burgeoning abilities through copies he himself executed in museums and galleries in Florence and elsewhere, Pascuzzi unlocks the transformation that made him great. At the same time, he narrates his own transformation from student to artist as Michelangelo’s last apprentice.
Alan Pascuzzi is a painter, sculptor, and professor of art history. As a student, he copied all 135 of Michelangelo's extant drawings from the period covered in his book from originals in various museums. He has been teaching Renaissance art techniques to students for more than a decade. He has appeared in TV documentaries on Renaissance art, including the BBC’s The Color Blue and Inside the Mind of Leonardo, and on 60 Minutes. Recently, an exhibition of his sculptures, The Ten Madonnas, opened at the Vatican. He lives in Florence, Italy.
