Young Michelangelo - Hardcover

[a] crisply thorough biography -- The Express * Christopher Bray * Tense and agile as an early sculpture, YOUNG MICHELANGELO is a compelling portrait of the artist as a young man in a dangerous time. -- Peter Robb, Author of M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio No art historian has got closer to [Michelangelo] than John T. Spike' Sunday Telegraph 'Michelangelo is a difficult man to like, but impossible to resist. Spike captures his magnetism, his drive and the sheer scale of his ambition. -- Sarah Bakewell * Sunday Times * Spike Crystallizes historical detail into vivid , memorable imagery...Alternating between accounts of the turbulent political atmosphere and details of Michelangelo's most private moments in the sculpture studio, Spike creates a rich narrative that promises more intrigue than the best adventure novel * Publishers Weekly *

This is a long-awaited and authoritative reinterpretation of the early life and career of arguably the greatest artist in history. Author John T. Spike surveys Michelangelo's early life from birth to his early thirties, probing the thinking, artistic evolution and yearnings of a young man thoroughly convinced of his own exceptional talent. Spike explores Michelangelo's involvement in the most troubling controversies of his age, and recreates Florence and Rome with vivid sketches of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Leonardo, Julius II and Machiavelli. This is a prodigiously informative and compelling account that will fulfil the need for a major Michelangelo biography for this generation and many to come.