Michelangelo. The Complete Works

The Library Essay

Three Arts Answered to One Hand

Michelangelo carved the Pietà before he was twenty-five, finished the David at twenty-nine, painted the Sistine ceiling in four years while protesting that painting was not his art, and spent his last two decades raising the dome of St Peter's. No other figure stands at the summit of sculpture, painting and architecture at once, and he worked until his death in 1564 at eighty-eight.

Frank Zöllner and Christof Thoenes assembled this complete catalogue for Taschen, reissued at XXL scale in 2019, with the frescoes reproduced large enough to read single figures at the top of the chapel. The scale is not indulgence; Michelangelo composed for distance and grandeur, and an ordinary page has always flattered him least.