The Lost Journals of Michelangelo: Volume II

By Gayle Millbank

How could one man be so versatile? So competent? So productive? A true Renaissance Man. Read this Journal and see what the author says Michelangelo was thinking as he led this super-human life.
In 1508 when Michelangelo was thirty-three he resumed his journal and maintained it until a few months before his death. At the first recording he was distressed as Julius II was demanding he paint the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Michelangelo resisted starting as he hated painting and wondered if he was being set up for failure by Raphael and others. But he was forced into doing the fresco and was miserable and poor right through to 1512 when he quit after a particularly vicious attack by Julius.
The next eight years finds him in Firenze happily chipping at the marbles for the Medici Tomb. After that he is mainly in Rome: '25 sees a new design for the Julius Tomb, '26 sees him back in beloved Firenze working on the Medici Tomb and then in '27 designing fortifications for Firenze which were ignored. By 1536 he felt rich and was finally working with popes he liked, spending the next four years on the Last Judgement, then shifting to the Julius Tomb and planning St Peter's Bascillica.
Michelangelo died before his 89th birthday. Until his last few months before he died he rode out each morning on his pony to inspect the progress on St. Peter's.
Through the Rome years he made good friends such as Urbino - his servant, Vittoria - who he described as a god or man in a woman's body, Tommaso -a beautiful Roman who inspired Michelangelo and helped up to and following his death. Those years also were filled with depressing losses through deaths -of many popes, most of the Medici family, many friends, and his father and brothers, until only nephew Lionardo was left to inherit his worldly possessions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gayle Millbank
• Release date: Jan 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9780973142181

Gayle Millbank

In recent years with my concerns about global warming I have been thinking about Earth's future. We need a clean source of energy and to expand to space colonies. Hence Zeta Star Mizar White and her life in 6012 evolved.I hope you enjoy it. More down to Earth and the Italian Renaissance: I have studied figurative clay-sculpting for many years. So naturally when I visited Florence in 2000 I concentrated on Michelangelo's sculptures. In his home I viewed his first bas relief, The Battle of the Centaurs, and was so close to it I could see his fine chisel marks. David of course was incredible but Michelangelo's last pieta with Nicodemus was breath-taking. However, The Medici Tomb moved me to tears as I was overwhelmed with emotion in the midst of so many of his bigger-than- life sculptures. On returning to Victoria I decided to write his diary. After thorough research into his life, the popes, and the Medici family; each year on his birthday I imagined what his life was like and who or what was influencing it and wrote in his journal. The Lost Journals of Michelangelo flowed easily and are here for you to read. During my research I discovered Leonardo and Michelangelo were in Florence and creating battle scenes in the same room for three months. Florence 1505: Leonardo battles Michelangelo a stage play evolved.

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Reviews for The Lost Journals of Michelangelo

[dksmeditation · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A delightful read - especially suited for introducing young readers to the life and spirit of Michelangelo. I highly recommend both volume I and II of The Lost Journals of Michelangelo. I have read a few scholarly biographies of Michelangelo, as well as many of his poems and letters. Gale takes a novel approach to bringing Michelangelo the man to life for us. She gives a short and perceptive view of his life - year by year - giving us a brief window to his inner life, drive, and vision as both a man of deep spiritual faith and driving ambition to reveal the glory and beauty of the human body and soul made in the image of God. I think she captures his personality and inner vision quite well.