Michelangelo: And the Reinvention of the Human Body - Softcover

"In this stimulating book...James Hall has set himself a heroic task in attempting to give a fresh interpretation of [Michelangelo]...[He] makes one think about the great man and his work anew, which is a considerable achievement." (Martin Gayford Sunday Telegraph)

"A substantial and intriguing contribution to the study of Renaissance art at a crucial moment in its evolution...[Hall] has opened his subject up. Michelangelo the Modern Artist, Michelangelo torn betweenvirtue and desire, is a new Michelangelo indeed." (William Packer Financial Times)

"For each of his persuasive eight chapters, Hall takes one key idea from Michelangelo's work and suggests parallels or sources...[But] in making his Michelangelo in the image of the artist's own time, [he] still succeeds in reminding us of a very modern hero." (Margaret Reynolds The Times)

"'Hall produces a critical analysis of Michelangelo's obsession with the body in this study'." (Herald)

"'There is an amazing richness of observation here...This book reminds us all of the kind of thing we are missing out on; but its learning and wisdom do a great job in helping us recover it'." (Nicholas Lezard's paperback choice Guardian)

Michelangelo's art is exhilarating, but also bewildering. What is the source of his incomparable power? In this bold and absorbing study, the art critic James Hall explores the body-language of Michelangelo's figures, and his preoccupation with the male nude. He answers many of the major puzzles - his stern Madonnas and their lack of maternal feeling; his concern with colossal scale and size; his passion for anatomical dissection; the meaning of the drawings made for his young lover Tommaso da Cavalieri. By asking basic questions about Michelangelo and his times, Hall sheds dramatic new light on many of his most familiar works, including the statue of David, the narratives of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and his haunting late images of the dead Christ.

This book re-assesses the popular idea of Michelangelo as an artist-superman possessed of titanic mental and physical powers, and the long-held view of him as brilliant but unbalanced, obsessed with the male nude. Hall sees him as the first artist to put the unadorned human body centre stage, giving him a profound relevance to our own time, in which visual artists and writers are so fixated on 'the body'. If we really want to understand our own culture, he argues, we need to understand Michelangelo. This compelling new study offers us a way to do so.