Volume 3, Number 1 · August 20, 1964
The Hundred-Dollar Misunderstanding
By Creighton Gilbert
Michelangelo's Lost St. John: The Story of a Discovery
by Fernanda de' Maffei, preface by Henry A. LaFarge
Reynal, 40, 112 plates pp., $15
Michelangelo the Painter
by Valerio Mariani
Arti Grafiche Ricordi (Milan), 151, 86 plates pp., $100.00
The four-hundredth anniversary of Michelangelo's death on February 18 1564 has been marked only in mild ways, chiefly by some very large books. Even these have been brought into existence as the result of several coinciding stimuli, including the Pietà at the World's Fair and the success several years ago of The Agony and the Ecstasy. The best tribute to Michelangelo, I suppose, is the way he survives all the tie-in gimmicks, no matter how inept or vulgar. The typical tribute, it seems, is a work of collaboration, in which the pure or learned is preserved inside a jazzy package: thus Irving Stone's splicing job on the Speroni translation of the letters, thus the Pietà among its blue lights, thus both of these books.
Review, 1635 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |