Becoming Michelangelo: Apprenticing to the Master and Discovering the Artist through His Drawings

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Michelangelos genius is revealed as never before by the man who became Michelangelos last apprentice
an American artist and art historian whose family helped carve Mount Rushmore.
Many believe Michelangelo's talent was miraculous and untrained, the product of divine geniusa myth that Michelangelo himself promoted by way of cementing his legacy. But the young Michelangelo studied his craft like any Renaissance apprentice, learning from a master, copying, and experimenting with materials and styles. In this extraordinary book, Alan Pascuzzi recounts the young Michelangelos journey from student to master, using the artists drawings to chart his progress and offering unique insight into the true nature of his mastery.

Pascuzzi himself is a practicing artist in Florence, Michelangelos city. When he was a grad student in art history, he won a Fulbright to apprentice himself to Michelangelo: to study his extant drawings and copy them to discern his progression in technique, composition, and mastery of anatomy. Pascuzzi also relied on the Renaissance treatise that Il Divino himself would have been familiar with, Cennino Cennini's The Craftsmans Handbook (1399), which was available to apprentices as a kind of textbook of the period.

Pascuzzis narrative traces Michelangelos development as an artist during the period from roughly 1485, the start of his apprenticeship, to his completion of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1512. Analyzing Michelangelos burgeoning abilities through copies he himself executed in museums and galleries in Florence and elsewhere around the world, Pascuzzi unlocks the transformation that made Michelangelo great. At the same time, he narrates his own transformation from student to artist as Michelangelos last apprentice.

Reviews

"From the micro to the macro, a wonderful romp through Michelangelo's heart and mind!"Terence Ward, author of The Guardian of Mercy:How an Extraordinary Painting by Caravaggio Changed an Ordinary Life Today

A remarkable inquiry into artistic creation. . . . This revelatory book is a must for art students and those seeking new insights into [Michelangelos] art.Kirkus Reviews

"This wonderfully readable and personal account of Michelangelos early years reminds us that that becoming a genius requires work and unwavering dedication. Alan Pascuzzi, an accomplished historian andequally importanta highly successful, sensitive, and insightful artist, combines a rare set of skills that permits him to tell the story of how an unlikely Florentine became the greatest artist of all time.Michelangelo did it. After reading this book, you too might feel the inspiration 'to create masters out of mere mortals like us.'William E. Wallace,Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History,Washington University in St. Louis

Becoming Michelangelo is a riveting account of a process of discovery that no one has ever undertaken before.Ron Netsky, professor of art, Nazareth College

Alan Pascuzzi tells the fascinating story of what happened when he started copying Michelangelos drawings and soon found himself virtually apprenticed to the master.Attempting to become Michelangelo, he developed a unique appreciation of how Michelangelo himself became the graphic artist we recognize and admire today. General readers will appreciate Pascuzzis fast pace and down-to-earth tone, full of observations and insights that are sure to open the eyes of experts, too.Gary M. Radke, professor emeritus of art history, Syracuse University

Author Bio

Alan Pascuzzi is a painter, sculptor, and professor of art history. As a student, he copied all 135 of Michelangelo's extant drawings from the period covered in his book from originals in various museums. He has been teaching Renaissance art techniques to students for more than a decade. He has appeared in TV documentaries on Renaissance art, including the BBCs The Color Blue and Inside the Mind of Leonardo, and on 60 Minutes. Recently, an exhibition of his sculptures, The Ten Madonnas, opened at the Vatican. He lives in Florence, Italy.

William E. Wallace is the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History at Washington University in St. Louis. He is an internationally recognized authority on the sculptor, painter, and architect, Michelangelo Buonarroti. He has written or edited eight books on the artist, including most recently, Michelangelo, Gods Architect: The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece.