Michelangelo and the Reinvention of the Human Body

by James Hall

This is a bold and absorbing study of the body language of Michelangelo’s figures and his preoccupation with the male nude. The study will shed a dramatic new light on many of the artist’s most familiar works, including the statue of David.

Genres: Art

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 11, 2005

About the author

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James Hall is a freelance art critic and historian. A former art critic for the Guardian.

Reviews

[Giovanni García-Fenech · Rating 1 out of 5]

I knew I was in trouble already when in the introduction Hall claims that for Michelangelo "The male figure... was always in some sense a surrogate for the ultimate human being, the dying and dead figure of Christ." That "always" was too categorical for my taste, but I forged ahead.

Then I got to his preposterous interpretation of the Doni Tondo, in which he claims the Virgin Mary is a stand-in for St. Christopher just because she is looking at the Christ child over her shoulder. Hall then proceeds to claim that the mysterious male figures in the background are "sinners waiting for purification in, and passage across it," referring to the river that St. Christopher crosses, but which is not in the Tondo, and which are not even attributes of St. Christopher, I simply gave up.

For a better academic treatment of Michelangelo, I highly recommend Marcia Hall's (no relation, I assume) "Michelangelo's 'Last Judgment."

[Amy Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do you approach a book about Michelangelo, without daunting the reader or setting a challenge too massive to achieve? James Hall manages both by focussing on the way the artist depicted the human body, using his treatment of the subject as an inroad to learn about Michelangelo.

The author assesses Michelangelo's times through politics, religion, philosophy and poetry to give a comprehensive view. By referring to a range of to ideas from Socrates and Erasmus, to Savonarola to Castiglione, from Vasari to Pater, Hall creates something original and totally readable.