The Agony and the Ecstasy

Part of prepping for my trip to Italy, now less than two weeks away, was to slowly read Irving Stone's magnificent life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Agony and the Ecstasy.  Written in 1961, it is a sprawling book that taught me about the life and times and works of Michelangelo (i.e., Renaissance Florence and Rome).

It also taught me about fresco painting, sculpting marble, and provided an excellent orientation guide to Florence and Rome.  I really enjoyed the thought processes that Stone gave to Michelangelo for each of his works of art--why he chose to carve David or the Pieta or Moses as he did or why he chose the particular scenes from the Bible that he did for his Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes.

I also learned about the Popes and the Medicis and the Borgias, as well as fellow artists, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raffaelle, Brunelleschi, and a host of other Renaissance giants.

It was immensely readable, the pacing was great--a long book, it started with Michelangelo as an 11 year old apprentice, and ended with his death at 89.

Stone has written a number of historical biographies of artists and other notable figures--there are a number of them that appeal to me.  Here's the list, lifted from Wikipedia:

Lust for Life (1934) – Historical novel based on the life of Vincent van Gogh

Sailor on Horseback (1938) – A biography of Jack London

Immortal Wife (1944) – Historical novel based on the life of Jessie Benton Frémont

Adversary in the House (1947) – Historical novel based on the life of Eugene V. Debs and his wife Kate, who opposed socialism^[3]

The Passionate Journey (1949) – Historical novel based on the life of American artist John Noble

The President's Lady (1950) – Historical novel based on the life of American president Andrew Jackson and his marriage to Rachel Donelson Jackson

Love is Eternal (1954) – Historical novel based on the marriage of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd

The Agony and the Ecstasy – (1961) – Historical novel based on the life of Michelangelo

Those Who Love (1965) – Historical novel based on the life of John Adams and Abigail Adams

The Passions of the Mind (1971) – Historical novel based on the life of Sigmund Freud

The Greek Treasure (1975) – based on the discovery of Troy by Heinrich Schliemann

The Origin (1980) – Historical novel based on the life of Charles Darwin

Depths of Glory (1985) – Historical novel based on the life of Camille Pissarro

Now I want to want the movie version, with Charlton Heston as Michelangelo and Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II.  I know the casting sounds hokey, but it's gotten good reviews!

Florence by Night

I'm currently slowly reading Irving Stone's 1961 best-seller The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo.

The book is excellent--well-written, a great way to learn about Renaissance art before my trip to Italy this fall, and an excellent guidebook to Florence.

I've been looking up places on my iPad and learning about the geography as I go. Stone also has some lovely lyrical descriptions that make me catch my breath, and so I have lots of ear-marked pages.

Here's one from the first section of the book, entitled "The Sculpture Garden," where Michelangelo Buonarroti as an eleven-year-old begins working as an apprentice to Ghirlandaio's fresco studio.  He steals out one night and crosses the Arno and climbs up to the Belvedere fort and looks down on Florence:

Florence, luminous in the full moonlight, so close that he felt he could touch the Signoria or the Duomo with his fingers, was a sight of such incredible beauty that he drew in his breath sharply.  No wonder the young men of the city sang their romantic ballads to their town, with whom no girl could compete.  All true Florentines said, "I will not live out of the sight of the Duomo." For him the city was a compact mass of pietra serena, the streets cut through with a mason's chisel, looking like dark rivers, the cobbled piazzas, gleaming white in the moonlight. The palaces stood sentinel, a couple of ranges higher than the modest houses clustered so tightly about them; and piercing the creamy gold sky the spires of Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, the magnificent three-hundred-foot thrust of the Signoria. Making a little group of its own were the great red dome of the cathedral, the glistening small white dome of the Baptistery, the noble pink flesh of the Campanile. Around all was the turreted, tower-studded city wall.