Portraiture, High Renaissance Art & Mannerism, Individual Architects, Designers, & Planners, Individual Artists, Italian Art

Michelangelo's Double Self-Portraits

Name: Michelangelo's Double Self-Portraits
Author: Edith Balas
ISBN: 9780887484179

by Edith Balas, Andrew Freese

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Overview

For many years scholars have been aware that Michelangelo included his own image in his art. In this study, Edith Balas discusses two previously unrecognized double self-portraits. The earliest of these, a statue known as the Victory, was a private project in which an aging Michelangelo of depicted himself surmounted by an idealized alter ego, a figure associated with his younger self, his beloved friend Tommaso Cavalieri, and the David and Goliath theme that preoccupied him through much of his career. In the second of these double self-portraits, The Conversion of Paul in the Pauline Chapel of the Vatican, the artist, again portraying himself in youth and old age, used a central event in sacred history to make a statement about his own spiritual transformation from Neoplatonist "paganism" to a more orthodox form of Christian piety. Dr. Balas carefully explores the meaning of both works with reference to Michelangelo's life, art and poetry, and reveals them to be among the profoundest autobiographical statements in the history of Western art.

About the Author, Edith Balas

EDITH BALAS has been Professor of Art History at Carnegie Mellon University for the past twenty-seven years, as well as Research Associate at the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to more than twenty articles in American and European journals, her publications include Brancusi and the Romanian Folk Tradition (East European Monographs, 1987; also available in Romanian translation), Michelangelo's Medici Chapel: A New Interpretation (American Philosophical Society, 1995), Joseph Csaky, a Pioneer of Modern Sculpture (American Philosophical Society, 1998), The Holocaust in the Painting of Valentin Lustig (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002), The Mother Goddess in Italian Renaissance Art (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002), The Early Work of Henry Koerner (Frick Art & Historical Center 2003). Dr. Balas has curated a number of exhibitions at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University, and the Frick Art & Historical Center.