Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:35:38.902Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Role of Letters in Biographies of Michelangelo*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Deborah Parker
Deborah Parker*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines the role that Michelangelo’s letters have played in biographies of the artist. It focuses on two periods — the Renaissance and the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the latter witnessing an outpouring of biographies on Michelangelo. The first section of the study examines the way in which Giorgio Vasari edited the letters he received from Michelangelo in his 1568 vita of the sculptor. In the second section I analyze how the availability of the letters, through a long and fitful process, influenced the way in which biographers from John S. Harford to Giovanni Papini characterize Michelangelo and his world.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , Spring 2005 , pp. 91 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I could not have been more fortunate in the readers I had for this study. I would like to thank Paul Barolsky, and the two readers, Caroline Elam and William E. Wallace, for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

Barocchi, Paola, and Ristori, Renzo, eds. Il carteggio di Michelangelo: Edizione pos-tuma di Giovanni Poggi. 5 vols. Florence, 1965-94.Google Scholar
Barolsky, Paul. The Faun in the Garden: Michelangelo and the Poetic Origins of Italian Renaissance Art. University Park, PA, 1994.Google Scholar
Barolsky, Paul. “Vasari and the Historical Imagination.” Word & Image 15 (1999) : 286 – 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barolsky, Paul. “What are We Reading When We Read Vasari?” Source 22 (2002) : 33 – 35.Google Scholar
Beck, James. Three Worlds of Michelangelo. New York, 1999.Google Scholar
Bembo, Pietro. Prose della volgar lingua. Ed. Marti, Mario. Florence, 1961.Google Scholar
Bull, George. Michelangelo: A Biography. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Ascanio, Condivi. Vita di Michelagnolo Buonarroti. Ed. Nencioni, Giovanni. Florence, 1998.Google Scholar
Condivi, Ascanio. The Life of Michelangelo. Trans. Sedgwick Wohl, Alice. University Park, PA, 1999.Google Scholar
Corsi, Stefano, and Lombardi, Elena, eds. Arte e storia in biblioteca. Milan, 1995.Google Scholar
Duffy, Michael H.. “Michelangelo and the Sublime in Romantic Art Criticism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995) : 217 – 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elam, Caroline. “’Che ultima mano!’ Tibero Calcagni’s Marginal Annotations to Condivi’s Life of Michelangelo.” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998) : 475 – 97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elam, Caroline. “From the Living Oracle: Michelangelo, Condivi, and Tiberio Calcagni.” Unpublished talk, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, 6 October 2001.Google Scholar
Gotti, Aurelio. Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti. 2 vols. Florence, 1876.Google Scholar
Grimm, Hermann. Life of Michael Angelo. Trans. Fanny Elizabeth Bunnett. 2 vols. Boston, 1900.Google Scholar
Grosskurth, Phyllis. The Woeful Victorian: A Biography of John Addington Symonds. New York, 1964.Google Scholar
Haas, Louis. “’Il mio buon compare’: Choosing Godparents and the Uses of Baptismal Kinship in Renaissance Italy.” Journal of Social History 29 (1995) : 341 – 56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harford, John Scandrett. The Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti. 2 vols. London, 1858.Google Scholar
Haskell, Francis. “Michelangelo and Some of his Biographers.” Times Literary Supplement 25 (July 1975) : 842 – 44.Google Scholar
Hatfield, Rab. The Wealth of Michelangelo. Rome, 2002.Google Scholar
Hirst, Michael. The Young Michelangelo: The Artist in Rome 1496–1501. London: National Gallery Publications, 1994.Google Scholar
Milanesi, Gaetano., ed Le lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti. Florence, 1875.Google Scholar
Østermark-Johansen, Lene. Sweetness and Strength: The Reception of Michelangelo in Late Victorian England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.Google Scholar
Papini, Giovanni., ed Le Lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti. 2 vols. Lanciano, 1910.Google Scholar
Papini, Giovanni., ed Michelangelo, His Life and His Era. New York, 1952.Google Scholar
Petrarch, Francesco. Canzoniere. Ed. Alberto Chiari. Rome, 1992.Google Scholar
Ramsden, E.H., ed. and trans. The Letters of Michelangelo. 2 vols. Stanford, 1963.Google Scholar
Smyth, Craig Hugh. “Osservazioni intorno a Il Carteggio di Michelangelo.” Rinascimento 25 (1985) : 3 – 17.Google Scholar
Steinmann, Ernst, and Wittkower, Rudolf. Michelangelo Bibliographie, 1510–1926. 1927. Reprint, Hildesheim, 1967.Google Scholar
Symonds, John Addington. The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 2002.Google Scholar
Thode, Henry. Michelangelo und das Ende der Renaissance. 3 vols. Berlin, 1902–12.Google Scholar
Thornton, Dora, and Jeremy, Warren. “The British Museum’s Michelangelo Acquisitions and the Casa Buonarroti.” Journal of the History of Collections 10 (1998) : 9 – 29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuena, Filippo. La passione dell’error mio. Il carteggio di Michelangelo: Lettere scelte 1532–1564. Rome, 2002.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio. La vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568. Ed. Paola Barocchi. 5 vols. Milan, 1962.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Trans. Gaston du C. de Vere. 2 vols. New York, 1997.Google Scholar
Wallace, William E.. “Miscellanea Curiosi–tiae Michelangelae: A Steep Tariff, a Half Dozen Horses, and Yards of Taffeta.” Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994) : 330 – 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace, William E.. ”Manoeuvring for Patronage: Michelangelo’s Dagger” Renaissance Studies 11 (1997) : 20 – 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilde, Johannes. Michelangelo: Six Lectures. Oxford, 1978.Google Scholar