Lessons From History Biographies

Every great artist needs both the freedom to follow their visions, and the pressure to eventually complete them.     Of all the fields of History I have studied in my decades of loving the topic, my knowledge of Art History has always been sadly limited. Partly this is my own lack of artistic vision; from my earliest academic days, my strength has always been in reading and writing, and not so much in any sort of visual talent or appreciation of what one looked like. To that end, I was well aware that the Renaissance artists were great men who made timeless artistic masterpieces, yet I knew very little about their lives or the details of what their art meant to them. Having discovered Miles Unger's 2014 study of Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces , I have a new appreciation for what the man accomplished, as well as an understanding of the complexities of dealing with tortured artists, many of whom have ambitions they could never accomplish without outside deadlines and d...