Author: John T. Spike.

ISBN: 978-0865652668

Publisher: The Vendome Press

Click Here To Purchase Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine: A Biography

Starting at the end of the author’s long and illustrious life, we meet Michelangelo as he has only four months left to live and many projects that are still unfinished. Giving the reader a front row seat of the early life and career of one of the greatest artists, we follow him from his birth until his early thirties. We can hear his thoughts, understanding his artistic creativity and view his incredible talent in the plates the author shares with the reader in this outstanding novel.

Michelangelo was an outstanding sculptor, painter and creating much controversy in his work and his life. The author, John Spike takes his own palette of paints and brush and creates a clear and vivid picture of the life and work of this great man. Added to the story are the important people that helped him create his work. Lorenzo de Medici, Leonardo Machiavelli and others helped him to understand and define his early works. The author allows the reader into the world of a great author who at an early age realized his passion was to draw, paint and create art in his own unique way. Talented from an early age, author John Spike helps the reader understand the personality of Michelangelo, his works from the start of his career and takes us on a journey that everyone needs to experience. With the magnificent pictures and plates of his work placed throughout the book, the reader can feel, understand and see the art work first hand as if you were seeing these paintings and more in a museum.

With a talent to copy the works of other great painters, sculptors and artists, he found himself in the employ of the Medici family and learned much more about the art world, the demands of this man and more. Learning from Donatello and many other masters he becomes ensconced in the Medici family and often sits at the table along with Lorenzo above his two sons. However, there is much research and history brought to light about the birth of the Renaissance, sculpture and how Michelangelo developed his skills as a sculptor and more.

The personal relationships of the great artist, cover the first 33 years of his life and career, author John Spike creates his own painting or sculpture of this man’s life including life in the Medici’s sculpture garden and the commissions that led to his work in the Sistine Chapel. Driven hard by his own compulsion to succeed, be the best and copy the master’s Michelangelo overcomes living with a dysfunctional family and persists with in creating his own art and exploring his genius to the fullest. Along the way we meet Machiavelli, Ghiravello and many other artists whose art he copied, followed and created as his own.

His life retold by author John Spike and his journey from the time he was three until he created the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s work is brought to life by this author, the paintings and the many people he met on his path to greatness.

The biography spans the many years of his life and introduces many other painters, sculptors and events that impacted his life before painting the Sistine Chapel. Recognition came readily to him after creating the sculpture of David. At this point he ranked front and center among Florentine artists pushing aside great men like Botticelli.

Although he was talented and had a rare genius, the author helps the reader understand the artist’s lack of confidence in himself. Cities fell, the Medici was expelled and Savonarola burned at the stake and his protectors were gone, fled or died causing easiness in this great man and never really affording him real peace. . Allowing the reader to hear the voice and the frustrations of the painter himself you can feel the torment and feel his pain.

The path to painting Sistine Chapel Ceiling finally came. Upon returning to Rome in 1508 the author relates how the pope’s interest had turned to the new basilica of St. Peter’s ordering our artist to abandon the tomb and begin working on what became his most magnificent achievement of all, the frescos on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in St. Peter’s completed in 1512. The beauty of it as described by the author you need to read for yourself to understand the time periods, the career of this great painting and the many people he met along the way. After completing the ceiling he then returned to his sculpture and created figures for the tomb of Pope Julius II.

He was psychologically free to bring fresco painting to its highest point. His art was a composite of the knowledge and revival of the classics that reigned during the Renaissance and his work helped to launch a new style of art called Mannerism. He was one of the greatest sculptors, painters, and artist that ever lived. Read this outstanding account of his life, his times and his work as author John Spike sculpts his own masterpiece of writing as he tells the story of this outstanding man and those he knew him.

Click Here To Purchase Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine: A Biography