Three Worlds of Michelangelo

This anemic treatment of Michelangelo Buonarroti's early career aspires to ""reach the quality that lies behind both his life and his work--his humanity,"" in order to counterbalance the epithet ""divine"" that has been his since the Renaissance. Beck (coauthor of Art Restoration: The Culture, the Business and the Scandal), a Columbia University art historian, identifies three strong father figures who, Beck writes, served as distinctive ""epicenters"" for Michelangelo's surging creativity: Lorenzo de' Medici, the de facto leader of Florence who encouraged the artist during his adolescence; Lodovico Buonarroti, his biological father, whose querulous influence increased markedly with Lorenzo's death in 1492; and Pope Julius II, his greatest patron. However, Beck fails to exploit this promising analytical framework, instead proceeding in a ploddingly chronological fashion. Rather than bringing the artist's multiple ""worlds"" into useful focus, or demonstrating how the three men informed his work (beyond the tender family scenes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel), Beck sets out to debunk stock theories about Michelangelo: his terribilita (terrible disposition), his homosexuality, his aesthetic leaning toward the non finito (unfinished) and the conceptual grouping of the central Sistine narratives (opposing the conventional three groups of three, Beck contends for a four-one-four arrangement, a point hardly relevant to the lay reader). Granted, Beck offers some wonderful anecdotes, and his account of a meeting held on January 25, 1504 to discuss the placement of Michelangelo's 13-foot David is nothing short of thrilling, as Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Perugino, Filipino Lippi, Piero di Cosimo and everyone else of consequence in the Florentine art world all weighed in on the subject of their fellow artist's greatest triumph. Ultimately, this is a frustrating book with some very engaging passages. B&w illustrations. (Feb.)