Michelangelo

THIS fictionized biography, while not without interpretative merit, is unconvincing because of its oversimplification. The naïvet*#233; of the narration gives a juvenility to the noncritical material which is incongruous with the Michelangelo mentality. Obviously a labor of love, it is difficult to understand what purpose is served by the author’s hero-worship and assumption of omniscience with the ways of genius. The thoroughly familiar material has been padded with irrelevant comparisons of the artist and Dante, the artist and Don Quixote, the artist and God. Of the inadequate reproductions, two are of works not by Michelangelo, while the elaborately analyzed Medici tombs are unillustrated and Paul Nash s admirable photographs of the St. Peter Pietà are here robbed of all their textural richness anti beauty. The translation is by James Whitall.