The work of the "divine" Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) has been an inspiration to art, artists, and art lovers for all time. The life and creative period of this sculptor, painter, and
architect spans almost an entire century. Both his sculpture---for example the monumental David or Moses---and his painting, which cluminated in the creation over many years of the frescoes in
the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, are among the masterpieces of Western art. In the free expression of artistic creativity with which Michelangelo constantly looked beyond existing traditions,
he anticipated---as almost no one else---the representational principles of modern art.
This volume presents the entire spectrum of Michelangelo's work and illuminates all its facets. Yet attention does not focus solely on the great Renaissance artist, but also on Michelangelo the
person, who was subject to, in the turbulent political and religious periods of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the interests and attitudes of both secular and ecclesiastical rulers, as
well as the machinations of scheming fellow artists. It is all the more to the credit of his immense artistic talent that, despite these difficult circumstances, Michelangelo created
sculptures, frescoes, buildings, and also poetry that are outstanding in their brilliance to this day.
"What the artist seeks to achieve with the greatest work and with the greatest diligence, in the sweat of his brow, is that everything he produces with the greatest effort should look as if it
had been created quickly, almost effortlessly, indeed with the greatest of ease---whatever the truth of the matter...and the essential principle remains: to expend heavy effort and nevertheless
create something weightless." Michelangelo, 1538
