Volume 3, Number 8 · December 3, 1964
Tolnay's Michelangelo
By Creighton Gilbert
The Art and Thought of Michelangelo
by Charles de Tolnay, translated by Nan Buranelli
Pantheon, 144, 48 plates pp., $7.95
Mr. de Tolnay is the author of the biggest, most learned study of Michelangelo in our generation—five volumes so far, with a sixth and final one yet to appear. Besides presenting an enormous amount of information, this large work contains many original interpretations which are extremely controversial among his scholarly colleagues. But the present small book is not, as its title perhaps suggests, a summary version of the large one. It is a special monograph on one aspect of the artist, which might be called—though the term is awkward—his ideology. The four chapters deal in succession with Michelangelo's political, philosophical, religious, and artistic ideas. The Preface does perhaps justify the title by explaining that the book deals with these ideas 'as they are revealed in his writings and in his artistic works,' but with few exceptions this monograph adds little to the relevant sections of the six-volume work.
Review, 645 words
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