Il Gigante: Michelangelo, Florence, and the David 1492-1504 FROM THE PUBLISHER
At The Turn of The Sixteenth Century, Italy was a turbulent territory made up of independent states, each at war with or intriguing against its neighbor. There were the proud, cultivated, and degenerate Sforzas in Milan, and in Rome, the corrupt Spanish family of the Borgia whose head, Rodrigo, ascended to St. Peter's throne as Pope Alexander VI. In Florence, a golden age of culture and sophistication ended with the death of the greatest of the Medici family, Lorenzo the Magnificent, giving way to an era of uncertainty, cruelty, and religious fundamentalism. In the midst of this turmoil, there existed the greatest concentration of artists that Europe has ever known. Influenced by the rediscovery of the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, artists and thinkers such as Botticelli and da Vinci threw off the shackles of the Middle Ages to produce one of the most creative periods in history -- the Renaissance. This is the story of twelve years when war, plague, famine, and chaos made their mark on a volatile Italy, and when a young, erratic genius, Michelangelo Buonarroti, made his first great statue -- the David. It was to become a symbol, not only of the independence and defiance of the city of Florence, but also of the tortured soul who created it. This is a wonderful history of the artist, his times, and one of his most magnificent works.
SYNOPSIS
From his London base, Gill writes mostly about contemporary history, but here focuses on the 12 years in Florence between April 1492 when Lorenzo de' Medici died and summer 1504 when Michelangelo's early masterpiece sculpture was placed in the Piazza della Signoria and he left for Rome and the blossoming of his artistic career. His emphasis is on the early development of the artist and his interaction with Florence. He includes 16 color reproductions. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
The 12 years between the death of Lorenzo de' Medici and the unveiling of the David are "the most dramatic in the history of Florence, and... the most dramatic of Michelangelo's life," according to Gill (Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim). That drama never fully emerges, however, in this hit-and-miss account. Picking up Michelangelo as "the flower in bud" as he apprentices to the great fresco painter Ghirlandaio, Gill tracks the artist as he begins to sculpt for the de' Medici, produces the early portents of the David, accomplishes the Piet and completes his "first and only monumental statue," il Gigante, the nickname early given to the David. In presenting the works (fleshed out in 10 illustrations and an eight-page color insert), fellow artists (da Vinci, Donatello, Verocchio) and an assortment of popes, dukes and kings, Gill's tone swings between lively (Savonarola as "a true hell-fire preacher," the Bacchus as "a real drunk," frescos as "the blockbuster movies of their day") and dutiful, as he offers correspondence and contractual minutiae. Complicated political maneuvering tumbles onto the page, while Pope Alexander's "bloated and unpleasant corpse" lies in state for three days and three pages. According to Gill, his book is "designed to give people who do not already know it a taste of a world in which great creativity lived alongside political realism." But such tastes prove the book's undoing; by the end the reader feels like a cocktail party guest who arrived too hungry, gobbled too many hors d'oeuvres and left feeling both overstuffed and unfed. (July) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Gill (Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim) takes as his subject the creation of Michelangelo Buonarroti's David. As with any tale of Renaissance art, much of the background story revolves around the politics and personalities involved. Focusing on the Medici in Florence, the Borgias in Rome, the military adventures of the French, and the spiritual machinations of Savonarola, Gill sometimes allows his main character, the strong-willed Michelangelo, to fade into the background. In addition to various military and political tidbits, the reader will pick up a few interesting facts about the creation of David-for example, that the block of stone had originally been planned for another piece of sculpture begun 40 years earlier. For another take on the artist as he creates one of his masterpieces, see Ross King's Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling. Gill does not offer much new to the recent spate of books on the period or the artists involved, and his book is more about the history of the period than about the sculpture itself, as the title suggests. Recommended only for larger collections with an interest in Renaissance art or culture.-Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Disappointing account of the creation of a great work of art. In spite, or perhaps because of, the strife and turmoil in 16th-century northern Italy, the arts, particularly the visual, flourished there to a degree not seen before or since. Florence, owing to its nascent democracy as well as its merchant class, led by the Medicis, benefited particularly from this artistic explosion and was home of, among others, Donatello, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. The latter, born into a noble but financially distressed family was discouraged from becoming a sculptor by his father who considered it beneath his station. Fortunately, he was "discovered" by the greatest Medici of all, Lorenzo the Magnificent, who took the young Michelangelo into his family and all but adopted him. Gill (Art Lover, 2002, etc.) spends most of these pages describing the turbulent events leading up to the creation of the world's best-known statue-but his heart seems not to be in it, telling what should be an enthralling tale in lackluster and listless prose. Sloppy repetitiousness further bogs down the narrative. He twice describes the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries, as well an administrative building known as the Bargello and combines repetition with inconsistency when he writes that Michelangelo was little influenced by the countryside or nature and pages later tells of his "willingness to copy from nature." Nevertheless, the author follows all this up with a wonderfully written, fast-paced description of Michelangelo's actual sculpting of the David. Successfully placing the reader at the scene, Gill at last proves an adept storyteller as well as history writer, making the lead-up all the more regrettable. Overall,there are better choices in this crowded field.
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