Michelangelo: 1475-1564 Life and Work [Anglais] [Relié]

If you've never seen one of these Taschen XXL-series books you may be in for a surprise. They are HUGE. And certain subjects just lend themselves to imposing presentation. Michelangelo is certainly one of those subjects. This book gives you several magnificent fold-outs of numerous paintings where you can observe the work almost down to a molecular level, and hundreds and hundreds of full-page plates. Yes, I would concede that a trip to Italy to see the works in person would be the optimum choice, but this is a close second! And, if you've already seen some of these works I can assure you that this book will be the ultimate commemoration of your experience. There is not currently, nor will there ever be in the future, a more astonishing book on Michelangelo. This is a vast, expansive work. The quality is first-rate, the coloring and tonal presentation of the plates is perfect and I suspect accurate to a scientific certainty. Taschen is very good about that sort of thing.

If your thought is that the book is "kinda expensive," I assure you that it is not, relative to what you're getting here. This, folks, is a family heirloom we're talking about. I've haunted used bookstores for two decades, and I can tell you that once this goes out of print the price on this will go into the stratosphere. Yes, Taschen keeps these things in print for a long time, but don't wait too long. As I write this the price is almost a give-away here on Amazon. Carpe diem! (And I note that the Taschen Stanley Kubrick XXL is now out-of-print and used volumes are selling for $800.)

The cover here is cloth, which adds to the appeal. Taschen has done some volumes with trendy-type covers which offer less assurance of long-term endurance. That has been my only criticism of Taschen's books over the years. The stuff they put out should be built to last 500 years. And this Michelangelo volume is. You'll love it. It comes wrapped in a nice dust jacket, and presented in a customized cardboard box with a handle for storage and transport, which I suggest you keep for that purpose and for maintaining the book's collectible appeal, in the unlikely or unfortunate event your heirs want to sell it for skiing, surfing, or partying.

If you get this volume, may want to also consider the Taschen XXL Leonardo da Vinci. I think it is still in print. Let's face it, if you are going to have two obnoxious and gargantuan books on historic artists it would be Michelangelo and Leonardo that you would want. I think they make a great pair. Just make sure you put them on a strong shelf, as these are heavy, heavy edifices.

I received this book yesterday, and it is certainly a monumental work, weighing close to 20 pounds and superbly produced. But potential buyers should be aware that while this book is labeled as a definitive, complete guide to Michelangelo's work, its real focus are the paintings and drawings. There is probably no better book for the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Last Judgment, with scores of extraordinary closeups of every part of each painting. The foldout of the creation of Adam is a joy to behold. Readers may or may not like the fact that probably 40% of the book is on Michelangelo's drawings, given that these are mostly preliminary sketches for sculptures or paintings, as opposed to complete drawings in their own right, as in the case of Leonardo Da Vinci. The book also covers Michelangelo's architecture very well.
But obviously many readers will buy this book because they want to see Michelangelo's sculptures, and this book is surprisingly, disappointingly weak in this area. Of course, the David gets its due and there is also good coverage of the Vatican Pieta and, oddly, the Bacchus. But many of the other sculptures, such as the Moses and the Risen Christ, get only one large and one small picture, despite the fact that the book, at over 700 pages, has space to spare. By contrast, the "Complete Michelangelo" by William Wallace provides multiple views of each and every piece of sculpture.
But most incredible, indeed inexplicable, of all, is that this book (unlike Wallace, or any other Michelangelo book that I know of) fails to provide any large pictures at all of what are, next to the David, the most iconic and powerful of Michelangelo's sculptures: his four "prisoners" in Florence. Having seen these in person, I can easily understand why artists for centuries have looked in awe at these amazing "unfinished" sculptures which show figures struggling to emerge from the marble-which is exactly what Michelangelo felt he was doing when he took his chisel to the rock. How on earth, in a book of this size and ambition, can the omission of these sculptures be explained? Indeed, no explanation is provided, and the only illustration of these four sculptures, which have so influenced modern art, is four tiny, poor quality pictures in the second section of the book that is a complete catalog of all of Michelangelo's sculptures. By contrast, the Wallace book has a four page foldout that shows the four sculptures next to each other.
In short, this book is fantastic for the paintings and drawings and a very disappointing missed opportunity for the sculptures. One can only wistfully imagine what would have been if the sculptures had been photographed as carefully and as thoroughly as the Sistine Chapel paintings. By all means get this book--and overall I am glad that I did, despite its high cost--but adjust your expectations and don't expect that this one book will suffice to fully cover all of Michelangelo's genius.

Excellent pictures of the frescoes, inadequate coverage of sculptures. This book is unrivaled for the sheer size of its reproductions. It is so huge that it is a bit difficult to read--one has to rest it on a table. Not suitable for reading in bed, to say the least. But the quality of the printing and colors in the main part of the book is first class. Its coverage is especially fine on the paintings. It comprehensively covers the Sistine Chapel with huge-size foldout prints of every fresco. There are fine close-ups of important areas, which are an amazing 2/3 of life size. One can examine these fresco details from a foot away--never before possible--instead of from 60 feet away with a craned neck. This can be breathtaking.

The sculpture photos are excellent too, but not numerous. I had been expecting several photos of each sculpture from various angles. Bacchus, Pieta, and David are well shown in multiple views but this is not the case for most works.

The text is on the whole very well written and illuminating.

The authors have extreme views on authenticity. This leads them to exclude very important sculptures because, it appears, the authors consider them unproven to be authentic. For example, the Santo Spirito wooden crucifix is shown only small, poor quality, and in black and white. (A far better, color, picture, can be found, free, in Wikipedia.) Even the Madonna and Child bas-relief that is his first work, the one selected to adorn the cover of the 1,000 euro ($1,500) La Dotta Mano book, and, worst of all, the four Slave sculptures, some of his most iconic works, are also relegated to poor quality black-and-whites at back of the book, as all are judged suspect by these authors. Drawings, however, if of doubful authenticity, or even known to be copies, escape this rigorous exclusion. So we have too many drawings and missing sculptures.

Some paintings receive the same relegation: the Manchester Madonna (which is clearly at least in part by Michelangelo) is hardly visible in a tiny, dark, picture, as is the Entombment (which I must agree is of doubtful authenticity).

A book claiming to be comprehensive should have more detailed and thorough illustrations of questioned works than this. Opinions change over the years and some of these will doubtless be accepted in the future. In some cases it seems that the authors are among a minority who dispute authenticity.

The book has a very large number of drawings, but the coarser paper in that section of the book, and the low contrast and low resolution and small size (even in this monster book) of their printing, makes them hard to see clearly. This section is in sharp contrast to the wonderful beauty of the fresco reproductions in the first section of this book. It would have been better to show fewer drawings at a larger size, and illustrate the sculptures properly.

Nevertheless, this is a truly outstanding book for the frescoes, and the photos of the sculptures that are shown and the text are excellent too. Worth its price.