Unger’s edged prose shows us a clear Michelangelo emerging from the stone of history.
Art historian and journalist Unger (Machiavelli, 2011, etc.) organizes his life of Michelangelo by focusing on six masterpieces of varying media that compose the pillars of his creative life.
Michelangelo di Lodovico di Buonarroti Simone (1475-1564) was a cantankerous genius whose works emerged not just from Italian marble, but from the even more adamantine stone of the political realities of his time. The six works that Unger focuses on include Pietà, David, the Sistine ceiling, Medici Tombs, Last Judgment and St. Peter’s Basilica. The author tells us about the idea, the creation (Michelangelo was notoriously secretive about his work and did not like others, especially his patrons, looking in and making suggestions), the political and interpersonal difficulties he faced, and the public receptions. This last varied widely: The Sistine ceiling brought cries of admiration; Last Judgment elicited cries of another sort—another painter disguised some nudity. Unger excels at showing us the artist at work: his reluctance, his caginess, his temperament (easily hurt and angered, he sometimes tried to run away) and his jealousies (da Vinci and Raphael among them). We marvel, too, at his mastery of so many different types of media. Unger describes his contentious relationships with members of his own family, especially his hectoring letters to his siblings. Readers will find it astonishing how many of Michelangelo’s letters remain; he died in 1564, the year of the birth of Shakespeare, who left no letters (or other manuscript material). We also see Michelangelo’s ferocious work habits and perfectionism and his ascetic lifestyle, which didn’t really change until later in his life when his financial situation became more comfortable. Michelangelo outlived numerous popes (his relationships with them were significant), local rulers and families, and other notable artists.
Unger’s edged prose shows us a clear Michelangelo emerging from the stone of history.Pub Date: July 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7874-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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