Books in Brief

Michelangelo, by Howard Hibbard (Har- per, 347 pp., $12.50); Fra Angelico, by John Pope-Hennessy (Cornell University, 242 pp., $42.50). Howard Hibbard’s Michelangelo is a model of what is so often a contradiction in terms, popular scholarship, a book probably aimed at the textbook market but one which should appeal to a far wider readership than college students. It is also a model of book making. Despite the complexity of its subject—Michelangelo lived 89 years and his legacy comprises not only painting, sculpture, and architecture but nearly 500 letters, some 300 poems, and hundreds of drawings—its size and price are modest, its heft negligible so that, joy of joys, you can read it in bed. For the customary battery of footnotes Professor Hibbard substitutes “Notes for Further Reading” and an up-to-date bibliography. Best of all, every work is illustrated where it is dis- cussed, a blessing to anyone familiar with the problem of finding Figure x or Plate y, which makes perusal of most art books, especially of the coffee table variety, so nerve frazzling. The lack of color plates, to which the book’s reasonable cost can be attributed, is unimportant since all Michelangelo’s work, whatever the medium, is basically sculpturesque—and anyway, excellent ones are easily available in other publications.

Unlike far too many of his academic colleagues, Professor Hibbard writes clearly and succinctly, so that the reader is painlessly made to understand such complicated matters as the iconographical scheme of the Sistine ceiling and the vicissitudes of Michelangelo’s lifelong involvement with the Tomb of Julius II (the abstrusities of which are to students of art history what Schleswig-Holstein was to Victorian politicians). More importantly, he is left with a deepened comprehension of the components of Michelangelo’s transcendent artistic power, its relevance not just to his own time but to ours. Books like this are rare at any price; this one is a real bargain and Professor Hibbard is to be congratulated.

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Michelangelo, by Howard Hibbard (Har- per, 347 pp., $12.50); Fra Angelico, by John Pope-Hennessy (Cornell University, 242 pp., $42.50). Howard Hibbard’s Michelangelo is a model of what is so often a contradiction in terms, popular scholarship, a book probably aimed at the textbook market but one which should appeal to a far wider readership than college students. It is also a model of book making. Despite the complexity of its subject—Michelangelo lived 89 years and his legacy comprises not only painting, sculpture, and architecture but nearly 500 letters, some 300 poems, and hundreds of drawings—its size and price are modest, its heft negligible so that, joy of joys, you can read it in bed. For the customary battery of footnotes Professor Hibbard substitutes “Notes for Further Reading” and an up-to-date bibliography. Best of all, every work is illustrated where it is dis- cussed, a blessing to anyone familiar with the problem of finding Figure x or Plate y, which makes perusal of most art books, especially of the coffee table variety, so nerve frazzling. The lack of color plates, to which the book’s reasonable cost can be attributed, is unimportant since all Michelangelo’s work, whatever the medium, is basically sculpturesque—and anyway, excellent ones are easily available in other publications.

Unlike far too many of his academic colleagues, Professor Hibbard writes clearly and succinctly, so that the reader is painlessly made to understand such complicated matters as the iconographical scheme of the Sistine ceiling and the vicissitudes of Michelangelo’s lifelong involvement with the Tomb of Julius II (the abstrusities of which are to students of art history what Schleswig-Holstein was to Victorian politicians). More importantly, he is left with a deepened comprehension of the components of Michelangelo’s transcendent artistic power, its relevance not just to his own time but to ours. Books like this are rare at any price; this one is a real bargain and Professor Hibbard is to be congratulated.