William E. Wallace (1) (1952–)

This ended up being just okay for me. It's certainly well-researched, careful, sober and authoritative, so that's nice. But I have two issues, both of which are sorta bigger than just this book:

1) I only read this one book about Michelangelo, which means it's hard for me to know whether Wallace's take is entirely the right one. I have no dissenting opinion, you know? In this case, my uncertainty is about Michelangelo's homosexuality. From what I've heard (including from Michelangelo himself, show more in the form of his wicked gay sonnets), he was pretty gay - like, somewhere between my friend Rob, who's happily married to a dude but other than that I could swear he's straight, and my friend Jeffrey, who's a slut of epic proportions. Wallace underplays and/or "excuses" this aspect of his life, though, using the hoary old "Times were different back then! Everybody wrote love letters to dudes!" and quoting mostly from his tamer poetry. I believe he's straightifying Michelangelo a bit, which I disapprove of.

(But this is a difficulty about history. We go through phases where we redefine it based on what our current society wants it to be. Lots of people would love to have Michelangelo as a gay icon. Are those people overstating their case, or is Wallace understating it? If Wallace had confronted the issue of Michelangelo's sexuality straight on, as I think he should have, I might have a better guess at the answer. Instead he tiptoes delicately around it, doing no one any favors.)

2) We build our myths based in part around what the most fun picture of a guy might be. It's fun to believe that Richard Gere stuffs hamsters in his butt, so why shouldn't I believe it? Similarly, it's fun to picture Michelangelo as this irascible, stinky old crank living in his own squalor and crazily hammering at musty old blocks of granite. But then a sober researcher like Wallace comes along and says, listen, if you just read the guy's letters, you find out he's pretty normal. Sure, a little fussy, but he bathed as much as anyone else, cracked jokes with a nice circle of friends, cared deeply about his family, and was perfectly capable of diplomacy. Okay, I believe him. But wasn't it more fun the other way?

I had the same problem when I was learning about the Dark Ages. It turns out it wasn't a wretched time of plague, burnings and constant Viking raids - at least, not completely, and not much more than the times before or after it. There was still trade, commerce, government, family...when the Roman empire collapsed, the only difference in most peoples' lives was that there were fewer Romans traipsing around demanding taxes. But that's no fun! Where's my schadenfreude?

Often it turns out that history was much cooler and/or weirder than I've been led to believe. The advanced and expansive pre-Columbian American societies are a good example of this. But sometimes it goes the other way: sometimes history turns out to be more mundane than I've imagined. I'm not complaining - well, I am, obviously, but I'm not going to stop reading. But seriously, Wallace, you're harshing my buzz. show less

Oscar Wilde once said, "I think a man should invent his own myth." One man for whom it could be said that he did this, at least indirectly through his contributions, is Michelangelo. He was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy to a family of moderate means in the banking business. He became an apprentice to a painter before studying in the sculpture gardens of the powerful Medici family. What followed was a remarkable career as an artist in the Italian Renaissance, recognized in his own show more time for his artistic virtuosity. It was a career of "an aristocrat who made art" according to his biographer William Wallace. Wallace's biography is compact at less than four hundred pages but it provides a generous amount of detail and interesting theories about the nature and importance of Michelangelo's life. Wallace studied biographies of other artists in his preparation for this work including those written by Richard Ellman, David Cairns, and Maynard Solomon. I think this helped him shape a worthy life of Michelangelo.

That Michelangelo was an artist worthy of note is a notion that began in his own lifetime as his contemporaries were writing about his life when he was in his early fifties. He was the only living artist to be included in Giorgio Vasari's famous Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects in 1550. Although this was an honor, perceived inaccuracies in Vasari's text led Michelangelo to ask his pupil and amanuensis, Ascanio Condivi, to write his biography. This Life of Michelangelo appeared three years later and emphasized, among other things, Michelangelo's noble origins. Thus the potential myth-making began. Wallace relies on many original documents including the letters of Michelangelo, of which there were more than a thousand, his records, and his family correspondence. I was interested in the attention paid to his poetry as I have long been fond of his sonnets. Not unexpectedly, however, the documentation for his life is uneven with gaps that make some of his life, especially the earlier years, more difficult to portray.
I appreciated the biographer's attention to the culture of the Renaissance and Michelangelo's place in it. The cultural history of society was presented with a focus on his times in Rome and Florence during progressive artistic periods of his life. The story of the artist reminded me of the story of other artists as Michelangelo was like many others who had difficulty persuading their father that the career of an artist was better than a prestigious profession and an advantageous marriage. Yet, even while Michelangelo insisted on an artistic career he still sometimes harbored misgivings and had doubts; nonetheless forging ahead in a direction that he thought would "resuscitate" his family name. Even more important to him, and this was an aspect of the life of painters and sculptors of his day, was his insistence that he was truly an artist; not a mere artisan running a workshop.
With works that include the "David" and "Pieta" statues and the ceiling paintings of Rome's Sistine Chapel, including the "Last Judgment" we look at him today as one of the greatest sculptors and painters of all time--a true genius. While Michelangelo lived most of his life in Rome, where he died in 1564 at age 88, he always considered himself a Florentine. He also was a generous family man who created great works of art for patrons that were more often than not his friends. show less

Two really great novellas that are definitely worth dipping into. Wallace takes the reader into the dilapidated world of dive bars, drunks on benders, desperate losers at the end of their ropes, and on the way, he throws in everything from armed patrols in Afghanistan, to teenage gangbangers, to Deadly diseases, to loneliness, and shut-ins and veteran's care. What strikes me about these stories is that they are not merely crime fiction stories, but actually are so much more literary in scope show more and delivery. show less

While I enjoyed this breezy biography, I wish it had been more substantial when it came to describing Michelangelo's art; it's difficult to see what he contributed to the Renaissance from the mostly superficial descriptions of his work in the book. Wallace spends much more time describing contracts, logistics, and Michelangelo's testy relationship with his nephew, which is understandable because the book is based on the artist's correspondence, but it ends up minimizing his achievements. I show more would have appreciated a more indepth analysis of Michelangelo's feelings towards the art of his peers - particularly Raphael and Da Vinci, who only receive surprisingly brief mentions.

As for the supposedly important new angle that Michelangelo considered himself an aristocrat, it doesn't affect our view of his work or life substantially, though it does help explain some of his behavior towards his patrons. More interesting was Wallace's debunking of the popular representation of Michelangelo as an antisocial hermit. The book makes clear that he had many significant friendships and that he was gracious and often generous.

I would recommend this biography but would urge readers to supplement it with another book that considers Michelangelo's art more closely, such as Ross King's "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling." show less