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A Life in Six Masterpieces
Simon & Schuster
August 2014
On Sale: July 22, 2014
448 pages
ISBN: 1451678746
EAN: 9781451678741
Kindle: B00HB62M66
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
The life of one of the most revolutionary artists in history, told through the story of six of his greatest masterpieces. Among the immortalsβLeonardo, Rembrandt, PicassoβMichelangelo stands alone as a master of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He was not only the greatest artist in an age of giants, but a man who reinvented the practice of art itself. Throughout his long career he clashed with patrons by insisting that he had no master but his own demanding muse and promoting the novel idea that it was the artist, rather than the lord who paid for it, who was creative force behind the work. Miles Unger narrates the astonishing life of this driven and difficult man through six of his greatest masterpieces. Each work expanded the expressive range of the medium, from the PietΓ Michelangelo carved as a brash young man, to the apocalyptic Last Judgment, the work of an old man tested by personal trials. Throughout the course of his career he explored the full range of human possibility. In the gargantuan David he depicts Man in the glory of his youth, while in the tombs he carved for the Medici he offers a sustained meditation on death and the afterlife. In the Sistine Chapel ceiling he tells the epic story of Creation, from the perfection of Godβs initial procreative act to the corruption introduced by His imperfect children. In the final decades of his life, his hands too unsteady to wield the brush and chisel, he exercised his mind by raising the soaring vaults and dome of St. Peterβs in a final tribute to his God. A work of deep artistic understanding, Miles Ungerβs Michelangelo brings to life the irascible, egotistical, and undeniably brilliant man whose artistry continues to amaze and inspire us after 500 years.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - July 24, 2014
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