Michelangelo at the court of Pope Julius II

Seminars

The course is primarily intended for PhD students, although it may be useful as an in-depth study for particularly interested undergraduate students.

Following up on the course on the early stages of Michelangelo’s career, this lecture series will focus, for the benefit of PhD students in particular, on Michelangelo’s major undertakings during the time of Julius II’s papacy (1503-1513), namely the pontiff’s mausoleum and the Sistine Chapel vault. Again, the presentation will take place according to a tight interweaving of primary and secondary sources of historical research and narrative (artworks and archival papers), and of art history and historiography (from the 16th century to the present), also matching Michelangelo with his masters, his colleagues, his patrons, and his intellectual and humanistic acquaintances.

Il carteggio di Michelangelo. Edizione postuma di Giovanni Poggi, edited by Paola Barocchi and Renzo Ristori, 5 vols., Florence, Sansoni Editore, 1965-1983, vol. I [1496-1518], 1965;

Giorgio Vasari, La Vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, curata e commentata da Paola Barocchi, 5 vols., Milan-Naples, Riccardo Ricciardi - Editore, MCMLXII;

Erwin Panofsky, Die Gestaltungsprincipien Michelangelos, besonders in ihrem Verhältnis zu denen Raffaels [1920], aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von Gerda Panofsky, Berlin, De Gruyter,  2014 (English edition: Erwin Panofsky, Michelangelo’s Design Principles, Particularly in Relation to Those of Raphael [1920], Princeton - Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2020);

Charles de Tolnay, The Sistine Ceiling, Princeton University Press, Princeton MCMXLV, 2nd edition MCMXLVIII;

Charles de Tolnay, The Tomb of Julius II, Princeton University Press, Princeton MCMLIV;

Michael Hirst, Michelangelo. I. The Achievement of Fame: 1475-1534, Yale University Press, New Haven - London 2011.

Other in-depth texts, mostly articles, will be indicated during the course.