Tag Archive: renaissance
Did you know that not only was Michelangelo a gifted sculptor, painter, architect and poet, he was also an aristocrat who firmly believed in the ancient and noble origins of his family? In fact, this belief in his patrician status fueled Michelangelo’s lifelong ambition to improve his family’s financial situation and to raise the social standing of artists. And his ambitions were quite evident in his writing, dress, and comportment, as well as in his ability to befriend, influence, and occasionally say ‘no’ to popes, kings, and princes.
In Michelangelo, William E. Wallace offers a view of the artist written from the words of Michelangelo as well as his contemporaries. This biography not only tells the artist’s own stories but also brings to life the culture and society of Renaissance Florence and Rome.
We are giving away one copy of this book. Please comment for a chance to win in response to this question: What is your favorite work by Michelangelo? Contest is open until December 9, 2009 midnight Eastern time. Sorry, but at this time we can only send books to U.S. contest winners. Good luck!
By Marina Belozerskaya
When we use the phrase “a Renaissance man” we typically think of someone of cultivated tastes, diverse cultural interests, and multiple talents. Cyriacus of Ancona was a true Renaissance man, but in a very different way. A self-made merchant and traveler, he became a diplomat and spy, hobnobbing with kings, emperors, the pope, and sultan – all thanks to his passion for archaeology, of which he was a founding father.
Cyriacus lived at the time when only a handful of Italian humanists were beginning to study the classical world, and none were interested in or willing to brave the rigors of travel to investigate the monuments of ancient Greeks and Romans outside Italy. Cyriacus, undaunted by the perils of journeys by land and sea, or by the enormity of the task he set for himself, devoted his life to preserving the past for posterity through direct documentation of ancient remains on the ground.
His training as an accountant came in very handy: having taught himself Latin and Greek in his 30’s, he turned his careful eye for details to the examination and recording of the material vestiges of the ancients. And he arranged his mercantile assignments to get to places where he could find such precious relics: Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Greek islands and mainland.
Alas, as happens with people driven by vision, Cyriacus gradually turned from a dreamer into a zealot, stirring up the flames for a new crusade by the Europeans against the Ottomans in order to save his beloved antiquities from destruction. Yet the value of the research he accomplished far outweighed his shortcomings. His life offers a fascinating glimpse at the Renaissance, with its accomplishments as well as shortcomings, and introduces us to one of its remarkable representatives.
IMAGE: Cyriacus’s drawing of the Parthenon. After Sangallo, Giuliano da. Il libro di Giuliano da Sangallo Codice vaticanobarberiniano latino 4424 riprodotto in fototipia, ed. Cristiano Huelsen. Lipsia: O. Harrassowitz, 1910.
was an award-winning teacher at Harvard, Tufts, and Boston Universities. To read more about her and the book, go here: W. W. Norton & Company
438 members
