History

Michelangelo: Recommended Resources

General books on Christianity and art

  • Helen de Borchgrave, A Journey Into Christian Art (Fortress Press, 1999)
  • John Drury, Painting the Word: Christian Pictures and their Meanings (Yale University Press, 1999)
  • Peter and Linda Murray, The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture (Oxford University Press, 1998)

The Renaissance

  • Margaret Aston, ed., The Panorama of the Renaissance (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1996)
  • John Dillenberger, Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oxford University Press, 1999)
  • Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art, 4th edition (Prentice Hall and Abrams, 1994)
  • Heidi J. Hornik and Mikeal C. Parsons, Illuminating Luke: The Infancy Narrative in Italian Renaissance Painting (Trinity Press International, 2003) and Illuminating Luke: The Public Ministry of Christ (T & T Clark, 2005)
  • John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke, Art in Renaissance Italy (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997)
  • Timothy Verdon and John Henderson, ed., Christianity and the Renaissance (Syracuse University Press, 1990)

Michelangelo

  • Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, translated by Alice Sedgwick Wohl (Louisiana State University Press, 1976)
  • James Beck, The Three Worlds of Michelangelo (W. W. Norton & Co., 1999)
  • John W. Dixon, Jr., The Christ of Michelangelo (Scholars Press, 1994)
  • John W. Dixon, Jr., Nature and Grace in Art (University of North Carolina Press, 1964)
  • Ross King, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (Walker & Company, 2003)
  • Michelangelo, Complete Poems and Selected Letters, translated by Creighton Gilbert, edited by Robert N. Linscott (Princeton University Press, 1980) 
  • Linda Murray, Michelangelo (Oxford, 1980)
  • Alexander Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge, 2000)
  • Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (Oxford, 1991)
  • William E. Wallace, Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting, Architecture (Hugh Latimer Levin Associates, Inc., 1998)

Vittoria Colonna

  • Roland H. Bainton, “Vittoria Colonna” in Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy (Augsburg, 1971)
  • Vittoria Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo: A Bilingual Edition, edited and translated by Abigail Brundin (University of Chicago Press, 2003)

Other artists in the “Gallery”

  • Bruce Cole, Masaccio and the Art of Early Renaissance Florence (Indiana University Press, 1980)
  • Georges Didi-Huberman, Fra Angelico, translated by Jane Marie Todd (University of Chicago Press, 1995)
  • Ronald Lightbown, Botticelli: Life and Work (Abbeville Press, 1989)
  • Roger Whiting, Leonardo: A Portrait of the Renaissance Man (Wellfleet Press, 1992)
  • James H. Beck, Raphael: The Stanza della Segnatura (Braziller, 1993)

The historical context

  • Craig D. Atwood, Always Reforming: A History of Christianity Since 1300 (Mercer University Press, 2001)
  • Roland H. Bainton, The Travail of Religious Liberty (Harper & Brothers, 1951)
  • Elisabeth G. Gleason, Reform Thought in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Scholars Press, 1981)
  • Joseph H. Lynch, The Medieval Church: A Brief History (Longman, 1992)
  • John W. O’Malley, “The Renaissance Papacy 1420-1565” in The Papacy, edited by Paul Johnson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)
  • Bard Thompson, Humanists and Reformers: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation (Eerdmans, 1997)

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