'Michelangelo, God's Architect' (Revised Book Review)

Michelangelo, God's Architect

The Story of His Final Years & His Greatest Masterpiece

by

William E. Wallace



I

THE LIFE AND WORK of Michelangelo are both extraordinary and breathtaking in the range of his work, and the author emphasises this afresh in this current work that tells us of the life of Michelangelo in his last 40 years, and because of his age, thereby emphasising his incredible skills and expertise, and in so many areas.

Professor Wallace’s method of writing is his minute attention to detail, and his ability to convey to the reader the timeline of history. It has the precision and detail of an architect’s hand and mindset.

In his hands, year dates become measurable, finite, present-day, which he conveys to the reader.

This is no obvious qualification, for many speak of the dullness of dates and thus their dislike for history which, with a little delving, I find often stems from the hands of teachers or lecturers who could not enter into the mood of the period about which they taught. This inability, children and teenagers interpreted as ‘boredom’, and so, they too, would yawn at even the mention of history.

II

I was fortunate in having a history teacher at school who did have that natural ability.

Even so, I am still pulled up short when I am asked to consider dates 400, 500 and more years past.

But take, for example, Professor Wallace’s description of a period of 62 years viewed from the perspective of Michelangelo. The author writes:

Earlier in his life, Michelangelo had fled Florence twice - in 1494, after the exile of the Medici, and again in 1529, during the turbulent Last Florentine Republic (1527-30). He experienced three other significant disruptions to his artistic career: the reinstatement of the Medici in 1512, the collapse of the Last Florentine Republic in 1530, and his self-exile to Rome in 1534.

The Flight from Rome in 1556, therefore, was the sixth time in his life that political turmoil completely disrupted Michelangelo's artistic endeavours, forcing him to confront an extremely uncertain future. These repeated ruptures drove home the painful fact that he was not master of his own fate and that art was of little consequence in the face of war, politics, uncertain financing, and fickle patrons. As ancient wisdom expressed it: In arma silent artes. "During war, the arts fall silent." At eighty-one, Michelangelo had good reason to assume that his artistic career was finished.

Extract from Michelangelo : God’s Architect by William E. Wallace.

III

I come face to face with 62 years of civil and military disruption. That pulled me up. It caused me to reread, but this time he moved me along six milestones on that timeline: 1494, 1512, 1527, 1530, 1534 and 1556.

I tend to equate year dates to the same years within my own lifetime. Suddenly, 1994 and 2012 pull me by the bootlaces and I vividly capture 1494 and 1512. It takes little imagination to then see the years 2027-2030 imminently ahead, and then, the years of the Last Florentine Republic (1527-1530) are suddenly very real, now only recently out of view.

IV

I look back and see the great historical figures of the day in the manner in which they are now remembered.

The author, however, takes me way beyond this by involving me with the minutiae of Michelangelo’s life. His correspondence with his nephew, his friendships, and removing the stain that earlier, and sometimes, envious peer writers made record of Michelangelo’s achievements.

I am brought firmly into view that the artist-sculptor-architect was also a deeply religious man, his faith shining through and delivering to us the splendour of his achievements that all of us, today, take for granted in the Basilica.

V

Examining history helps me to widen my understanding of the present, as well as providing me with hitherto unseen perspectives. All of us, in the present, look to the past, and thereby fix our compass bearings and make more assured, our hoped-for future.

It is remarkable that St Peter’s Basilica in Rome was Michelangelo’s most famous achievement when one considers his age.

I take for granted that people live into their eighties and nineties and beyond.

When I commenced practising law in probate and succession, the sight of a death certificate marking a century was still something that brought people from offices to take a peek; not to mention the question ‘is the Queen’s Telegram in the papers by any chance?’

Forty years on, I now read of people twenty years into the century following their own century. In Michelangelo’s day, a person had done well to reach sixty, even forty.

I will not have time to visit Rome or Florence personally but, goodness me, William Wallace is enabling me to do so in another way. That gives a measure of the power of this book. I am left very firmly aware that regardless of the standing of any Papacy in the eyes of the people and the wider world in every century, every papacy rests firmly upon fallibility.

9 April 2023
All Rights Reserved

LIVERPOOL

© 2023 Kenneth Thomas Webb

Written 5 July 2021