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in their text Italian Renaissance Art (1997). Ironically, some colleagues have 
hesitated to adopt it for classroom use because they feel there’s too much of that 
‘other’ stuff and not enough on the familiar trio and the familiar names. Sigh. 
Their more Burkhardtian ‘Italian Renaissance’ is another invented tradition 
that, like the modern Siena palio with its acrobatic flag-throwers and vortical 
horse race, becomes so familiar, romantic and evocative and we easily fall for 
thinking that it’s the real thing.

nicholas terpstra, University of Toronto

Parker, Deborah. 
Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing. 
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xii, 156 + 11 b/w plates. ISBN 
978-0-521-76140-6. $74.13.

Deborah Parker’s Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing fills an important 
gap in Michelangelo studies. As the author herself explains, the fifth and 
final volume of Michelangelo’s indirect correspondence was published only 
seventeen years ago in 1994 and it is not just the artist’s letters that demand 
re-examination in light of the recently completed carteggio indiretto, but also 
earlier biographies that have depended, to greater or lesser effect and degrees, 
on these letters and the vicissitudes of their critical tradition. 

Parker’s insightful four-chapter study aims at explicating key aspects 
of the artist’s epistolary rhetoric and the interests or investments to which 
they point. It begins most appropriately with a review of  select Michelangelo 
biographies from different points in history and an analysis of corresponding 
portrayals of the artist to which the pens of these various biographers gave rise.

The first chapter, “The Role of Letters in Biographies of Michelangelo,” 
focuses exclusively on the periods of the Renaissance, and the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries. Parker reveals how both the transmission history 
of the letters and vested interests of different biographers influenced their 
characterization of the artist. Specific attention is given to biographies by 
Giorgio Vasari (1550, 1568), Hermann Grimm (1860), Aurelio Gotti (1876), 
John Addington Symonds (1892), and Giovanni Papini (1952). Though Ascanio 



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Condivi’s 1553 biography is mentioned, it is not submitted to analysis in this 
chapter. The discussion of more recent biographies consists in a brief handling 
of E.H. Ramsden’s Introduction to her translation of Michelangelo’s letters, and 
to book-length studies by George Bull (1995), Anthony Hughes (1997), and 
William Wallace (2009). Parker furnishes a particularly sensitive reading of 
the biographies by Vasari and Symonds; her analysis of Vasari is consistent in 
its conclusions with earlier scholarship by Paola Barocchi and Paul Barolsky. 
Because this chapter discusses the impact of positivism, Neoclassicism and 
Romanticism on the reception of Michelangelo’s letters, it constitutes an 
important contribution to Michelangelo studies more generally. 

The remainder of Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing provides 
an alternative reading of the letters to their customary treatment “as sources 
for biographical reconstruction or the dating of artworks” (2). In the ensuing 
three chapters, Parker substantiates her claim that Michelangelo was as much 
“a fabulist” in his letter writing as Vasari was in his Vite (46). 

Chapter two, “From Word to Image: Epistolary Rhetoric and Artistic 
Form,” turns to a discussion of what Parker rightly identifies as the three 
key traits of Michelangelo’s writing — the use of aphorisms, repetition, and 
contrast: aphorisms as a means of giving advice or as a tool for structuring an 
argument, and repetition, through such devices as polyptotons and hyperbole, 
to achieve opposition in his texts. Highlighting these traits, Parker argues that 
a good portion of Michelangelo’s letters constitute a “crafted performance” 
(64) demonstrating the author’s “keen sense of audience” (70). This chapter 
additionally includes twenty-three images and a discussion of Michelangelo’s 
art to which his letters are juxtaposed and compared so as to reveal his 
“predilection for contrast” as “a deep structuring principle” of his worldview 
(81). 

The topos of enslavement is traced through Michelangelo’s correspondence 
in chapter three, “From Experience to Expression: Representations of Captivity 
in Michelangelo’s Art, Poetry, and Letters.” In this micro-study, Parker identifies 
a recurrence of certain linguistic constructs in the artist’s correspondence — 
the words “fatica” (toil), “obbligato” (obligation) and “servire” (to serve), in 
particular — that demonstrate the artist’s association of art with servitude and 
duty. This chapter serves as a valuable complement to Neoplatonic analyses of 
Michelangelo’s works. It also constitutes a salutary reminder on the importance 
of keeping Michelangelo’s daily life firmly in mind when examining or 



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speculating about more intimate, and so less obviously attested, aspects of his 
character. 

Another series of key words and clusters are examined in the fourth 
chapter, “Michelangelo’s Words: Saying, Doing, Meaning,” which focuses on 
the recurrence of terms like “animo”(mind) “volontà” (will) and “intendere” (to 
understand/to mean). Parker reveals that one of the artist’s primary concerns 
seemed to be articulating his intentions, comprehending those of others, and 
harmonizing the two. Honour and profit are also discussed in the letters and in 
light of Florentine culture of Michelangelo’s day.

In Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing, Parker successfully 
identifies “prevailing tendencies in the way Michelangelo chooses to express 
himself ” (144). Ultimately, she arrives at similar conclusions to those studying 
his poetry: Michelangelo writes in a concise manner, now conscientiously, 
now spontaneously, with the twin penchants of developing a single concept or 
maxim within a given text, on the one hand, and of fleshing out the same idea 
in varied, or even opposing ways, across different ones, on the other. 

If a criticism of this volume were to be ventured, it would be that Parker 
does not discuss the implications of her work for the field of Michelangelo 
studies more broadly. Though she identifies a place for her contribution at the 
beginning of her volume, she does not then reflect upon it at the end. What 
ultimately emerges from Parker’s analysis is the characterization of Michelangelo 
as a man tormented by, yet dutifully committed to serving through toil, those 
to whom he is bound by obligation (family, patrons, and often, friends) — 
individuals whose desires and expectations, much like his own, he is troubled 
to understand as well as to meet. This portrait alone renders Michelangelo and 
the Art of Letter Writing a valuable addition to the field.

 
sarah rolfe prodan, University of Toronto