Average Rating: 
Rating: - Superb author as engaging tour guide
Have you ever visited a landmark and had a tour guide who brought history to life - an engaging and entertaining person who had all the facts at his (or her) fingertips, but who delved beneath the facts to bring the participants to life? If so, you will understand the appeal of Ross King's "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling," for Mr. King is that kind of a tour guide. He takes us into the Sistine Chapel and fully explicates Michelangelo's masterpiece as a work of art, including everything from the technique of fresco to the kinds and colors of paint (and their origins) to the various challenges in the technique known as foreshortening. Although he liberally sprinkles the text with Italian and art terms, he explains each as he goes along. Along the way, he also drops in interesting bits of information, such as, which panels in the painting, Michelangelo first saw from the floor of the chapel and what stylistic and color changes he incorporated in the panels after that, or which poses must have been difficult for the models (and who some of the models may have been) or why the medallions are disproportionately small to the rest of the work. Mixed in with art history and art appreciation are relevant pieces of contemporary history: the debauched and demanding Pope Julius II and the state of the papacy during his reign, the wars and diseases that afflicted the various participants and hindered work on the chapel, and numerous other small details that enliven the narrative. King compares and contrasts Michelanglo with great rival, Raphael, who was painting the pope's private apartments at the same time Michelanglo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Raphael, who died relatively young, was more attractive, more popular, more adept at fresco (at least more adept than Michelangelo was when he began the ceiling) and generally a more sympathetic character than Michelangelo who lived to be almost ninety, had disgusting personal habits, was really not much to look at, and who really wanted to sculpt, not paint. While Raphael had the characteristic Italians call sprezziatura (making the difficult look easy), Michelangelo seemed to find everything difficult, or make it so. King also debunks some of the more popular myths, particularly that Michelanglo painted the entire ceiling by himself, lying on his back. He had a host of helpers, some of whom also served as his teachers because he had minimal fresco experience when he began the chapel, and, while the scaffold was positioned so that neither he nor his assistants had to lie on their backs, the half squatting and bent-backward positions they did assume were equally uncomfortable, if not more so. Though longer than "Bruneleschi's Dome," "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling" moves just as quickly. King is never slow, dry or pedantic. He is, however, unfailingly informative. Should you be fortunate enough to visit the Vatican, this is obligatory preparatory reading. If you do not have that opportunity, King's tour of the Sistine Chapel is the next best thing to seeing it in person.
Rating: - The Misanthrope And The Warrior Pope
Ahhh.....remember Charlton Heston as Michelangelo- all alone, on his back- painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Well, in this very informative and enjoyable book, Ross King quickly clears up those two major misconceptions. Michelangelo was not on his back: the scaffolding was placed 7 feet below the ceiling. Michelangelo painted while standing, reaching overhead, with his back arched. And, he had plenty of help in his glorious enterprise. Michelangelo took on the project with a great deal of reluctance. What he had really been excited to do was the job Pope Julius II had originally had in mind: the sculpting of the Pope's burial tomb. For Michelangelo considered himself to be a sculptor rather than a painter. Though originally trained, in his early teens, as a painter, he had devoted himself almost entirely to sculpting in the nearly 20 year period which had elapsed between his training and receiving the summons from Pope Julius II to begin work on the Sistine Chapel. Additionally, Michelangelo had never before painted a fresco, which is a very tricky process involving painting on wet plaster. (He had once started preparatory work on a fresco project where he was supposed to go "head to head" with Leonardo. Alas, that project never came to pass!) So, Michelangelo did what any sensible person would do...he hired as assistants artists who had prior experience doing frescoes. Thus begins the fascinating tale of the four year project. Along the way we learn of Renaissance rivalries- Michelangelo had once taunted Leonardo da Vinci in public for having failed in his attempt to cast a giant bronze equestrian statue in Milan. Leonardo gave as good as he got: "He claimed that sculptors, covered in marble dust, looked like bakers, and that their homes were both noisy and filthy, in contrast to the more elegant abodes of painters." There was also the rivalry between Raphael and Michelangelo. The two artists couldn't have been more different- Raphael, handsome, charming, well-mannered and sociable (and a notorious connoisseur of beautiful women); Michelangelo- squat nosed and surly, pathologically suspicious, seemingly uninterested in anything unrelated to his art. Raphael was at work on a fresco in the Pope's library, in another section of the Vatican, at the same time Michelangelo was working on the Sistine Chapel. One of the most interesting parts of the book occurs when the ceiling is halfway completed. All the scaffolding was removed so that the Pope could examine the work to date. This was also the first time that Michelangelo could get an idea of how the ceiling would look from the floor of the chapel. He is said to have been shocked at how small his figures looked, and when he started work on the second half of the ceiling he decreased the number of figures portrayed but increased their size by an average of four feet. It is also said that at this time Raphael, realizing how much more public and prestigious the Sistine Chapel project was than his own assignment in the Pope's library, lobbied to be allowed to do the second half of the ceiling. Of course, that never came to pass. Mr. King manages to incorporate an amazing amount of material into such a relatively small book: We learn about the complexities of fresco painting, especially on a concave surface; what materials the pigments were made of and the processes involved in making them; Michelangelo's lack of interest in adding realistic landscapes to the backgrounds of his compositions (he considered landscape painting to be an inferior form of art); his sense of humor- in one of the tableaus he has a character "making the fig" at another character (an Italian equivalent of giving someone the finger). The author also shows us the difficult relationships Michelangelo had with his father and brothers (they were always hitting him up for money or trying to get him to use his influence to get them jobs, etc.). And, as a change-of-pace, punctuating the entire book we have Pope Julius II going out on various military campaigns to punish wayward Italian city-states (and dragging along his reluctant cardinals)! Somehow, Mr. King manages to weave all this together into a seamless, smoothly flowing narrative. This is an excellent book, both educational and entertaining!
Rating: - Have any interest in Michelangelo and/or the Sistine Chapel?
If you do, you will love this book. I read a good part of it while in Italy on vacation and marveled at the richness and detail Ross King uses to illustrate the people, politics, daily grind, and so much more of the early sixteenth-century in Italy. The ceiling of Sistine Chapel was painted in four years, 1508-1512, and King puts you on the scaffolding right beside Michelangelo as he works, whines, fusses, and demonstrates pure genius. I loved King's book, Brunelleschi's Dome, for many of the same reasons. The author has a background in academics and has done his research to produce an "in your face" accounting of Michelangelo and his famous ceiling. This is a terrific read and lots of fun. I hated to finish!
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