Michelangelo's Mountain

Here’s a brand new book that aims to give us the inside view on Michelangelo and his quest for artistic perfection - but this is not a book about the Sistine Chapel ceiling or the Pieta. Rather this book details Michelangelo’s quests for perfect blocks of marble in the quarries of Carrara in Northern Italy. Author Eric Scigliano presents a vivid picture of Michelangelo’s escapades and ordeals in the quarries that produced the marble from which the artist carved every single statue that he ever created.

Michelangelo’s repeated trips to Cararra - some lasting as long as eight months - gave him intimate knowledge of its mountain of marble. He spent his time there choosing the perfect blocks of statuario - marble fit for carving statuary - and supervising their quarrying and their transport to distant locales like Florence and Rome.

In writing this book, Scigliano shows his reader just how difficult and complex the task of quarrying marble was in the Renaissance, and he also demonstrates the extraordinary effort needed to produce the perfect block of marble.

Fortunately this book is not just about the quarries. It also covers the subject of Michelangelo’s scultpural work, with chapters discussing some of the artist’s greatest hits, like the David and the Pieta. Equally spellbinding are Scigliano’s descriptions of the enormous social and political challenges Michelangelo faced throughout his career, and his often troubled relationships with popes, princes, and poets.