As he entered his seventies, Michelangelo despaired that his productive years were over. Anguished by the death of friends and discouraged by the loss of commissions to younger artists, this supreme Renaissance painter and sculptor began carving his own tomb. It was at this unlikely moment that Michelangelo was given charge of the most ambitious and daunting project of his long creative life—the design and construction of St. Peter’s Basilica. In this richly illustrated book, William Wallace tells for the first time the full story of Michelangelo’s final two decades—and of how the artist transformed himself into one of the greatest architects of the Renaissance.
Awards and Recognition
- Finalist for the Marfield Prize (The National Award for Arts Writing), Arts Club of Washington
William E. Wallace is the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History at Washington University in St. Louis. His many books include Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times.
"[Michelangelo, God’s Architect] paints a complex portrait of this tortured and talented Renaissance man and excavates a lesser-known but crucial final chapter of the artist’s approximately 75-year career….[An] extremely readable, engaging book. –Lauren Moya Ford, Hyperallergic"
"Michelangelo, God’s Architect represents the culmination of a career dedicated almost entirely to this single, engrossing figure. . . . Wallace’s book is a model of deep scholarship brought to life with lively prose through the integration of sixteenth century documents on almost every page. . . . A rollicking good story."—Cammy Brothers, Journal for the Society of Architectural Historians
“A riveting experience for lovers of any art form. . . . [Wallace] reveals here his masterly skills as a biographer.”—Peter Marks, Washington Post
“Poignant. . . . [Wallace] relies on his own experience to take bold risks as a writer, pushing the haphazard evidence that survives from sixteenth-century Rome to bring the city and its people to life.”—Ingrid D. Rowland, New York Review of Books
“Wallace’s Michelangelo is marvellously human.”—Michael Bird, The Telegraph
"This book not only helps us understand Michelangelo and his work on St. Peter's Basilica, it allows us all to reflect on how we hope to fathom the meaning of our own lives."—Walter Isaacson, author of Leonardo da Vinci
“[Wallace] brings the man alive.”—James Stevens Curl, Times Higher Education
“Wallace brilliantly evokes the day-to-day life of the project as Michelangelo struggled to resolve its many difficulties.”—Catherine Fletcher, Literary Review
