Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer

Bambach, Carmen C. with essays by Claire Barry, Francesco Caglioti, Caroline Elam, Marcella Marongiu, and Mauro Mussolin (2017)

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Watsonline WorldCat

A New York Times Best Art Book of 2017

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Inside the Catalogue—"Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer".

Read an interview with Carmen C. Bambach on Now at The Met.

Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) Award for Excellence, Winner (2018); BIGNY Book Show, Winner (2018); Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize, Winner (2019)

Publication Details

Description

Consummate painter, draftsman, sculptor, and architect, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was celebrated for his disegno, a term that embraces both drawing and conceptual design, which was considered in the Renaissance to be the foundation of all artistic disciplines. To his contemporary Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo was “the divine draftsman and designer” whose work embodied the unity of the arts. Beautifully illustrated with more than 350 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and architectural views, this book establishes the centrality of disegno to Michelangelo’s work.

Carmen C. Bambach presents a comprehensive and engaging narrative of the artist’s long career in Florence and Rome, beginning with his training under the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio and the sculptor Bertoldo and ending with his seventeen-year appointment as chief architect of Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. The chapters relate Michelangelo’s compositional drawings, sketches, life studies, and full-scale cartoons to his major commissions—such as the ceiling frescoes and the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, the church of San Lorenzo and its New Sacristy (Medici Chapel) in Florence, and Saint Peter’s—offering fresh insights into his creative process. Also explored are Michelangelo’s influential role as a master and teacher of disegno, his literary and spiritual interests, and the virtuoso drawings he made as gifts for intimate friends, such as the nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna, the marchesa of Pescara. Complementing Bambach’s text are thematic essays by leading authorities on the art of Michelangelo. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, and richly illustrated, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of this timeless artist.

Table of contents

Sponsor’s Statement
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Lenders to the Exhibition
Contributors
Note to the Reader

Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer
Carmen C. Bambach

I. Il Divin’ Disegnatore

II. The Young Artist and the Traditions of Fifteenth-Century Art

III. Herculean Efforts and a New Artistic Vision

IV. Designing Public Works: The Sculptor-Architect at San Lorenzo

V. Private Works: The Master of Disegno and His Gift Drawings

VI. Rome: Strategic Friendships and a Reputation at Stake

VII. Art and Personal Spirituality in an Age of Reform

VIII.The Fame and Legacy of a Genius

Essays

Examining Michelangelo’s Torment of Saint Anthony: New Revelations
Claire Barry

Prose and Poetry in Michelangelo’s Architectural Drawings
Caroline Elam

Michelangelo and the Experience of Space
Mauro Mussolin

Michelangelo the Sculptor: A Lifetime of Formal Obsessions
Francesco Caglioti

Tommaso de’ Cavalieri
Marcella Marongiu

Catalogue of the Exhibition
Carmen C. Bambach, compiled with the assistance of Jeffrey Fraiman and Furio Rinaldi

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Photograph Credits

About the authors

Carmen C. Bambach is Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She is the author of Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman and The Drawings of Bronzino.

Claire Barry is Director of Conservation at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.

Francesco Caglioti is Professor of Art History at the Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy.

Caroline Elam is an independent art historian.

Marcella Marongiu is Art Historian, Office of the Director, at the Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy.

Mauro Mussolin is a Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, New York.

Press reviews

Art Newspaper

"This handsome volume records the exhibition it celebrates by including a scrupulously detailed checklist of the 246 works of art on display, with technical descriptions, provenance and select (though usually extensive) bibliography by Carmen Bambach with Jeffrey Fraiman and Furio Rinaldi. The book offers a lasting contribution to Michelangelo scholarship...[Bambach] sensitively outlines the rich legacy of Michelangelo scholarship...Her own attributions or revised datings are thoughtfully proposed, with contrary views acknowledged in the extensive notes (themselves mines of information on historical and literary contexts). Throughout, Bambach’s sensitive and cogent study of “the divine draftsman” weaves observations on Michelangelo’s purpose, approach, choice of material, handling and style with important information on technique, on the physical condition of sheets and on their afterlife...The book’s real achievement is the integration of the figural and the architectural through the attentive analysis of fragments as much as substantial designs. It simultaneously integrates related texts and representations in a treatment of the drawings in their historic materiality and as palimpsests of the artist’s thoughts and creativity."

Bookforum

"Bambach’s intriguing book-length essay—the main event in a typically imposing Met catalogue, which also features specialized studies by other scholars and a formidable critical apparatus—views Michelangelo’s sprawling practice through the concept of disegno…This reading of Michelangelo makes the well-known store of the master feel fresh."

Brooklyn Rail

"Excellent."

Format magazine

"This 2017 book takes a close look at the work of Michelangelo, illustrated with 350 images that give new insight into the renowned artist’s work."

Modern Art Notes Podcast

"Lavish, extensive."

New Criterion

"It should not go without remark that the catalogue of the exhibition is itself a major contribution to the study of Michelangelo’s drawings, containing a monograph-length chronological survey by Bambach herself and five shorter studies by eminent authorities."

New York Times

"Both a visual souvenir of the Met’s grand exhibition of Michelangelo drawings, and something more…Years in the planning, the show was a labor of love on the part of its curator, Carmen C. Bambach. And the long, multipart essay by her that dominates the catalog has a sense of personal investment unusual in a scholarly context. The tone and pace makes you feel involved in an inquiry that turns a monumental art into the human record it was, and is."

Observer

"In the massive catalogue, curator Carmen C. Bambach describes Michelangelo’s hand incising, even excavating on the page."

The Times

"The next best thing to the show…contains the latest scholarship…beautiful."

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