In this volume, Emily A. Fenichel offers an in-depth investigation of the religious motivations behind Michelangelo's sculpture and graphic works in his late period. Taking the criticism of the Last Judgment as its point of departure, she argues that much of Michelangelo's late oeuvre was engaged in solving the religious and artistic problems presented by the Counter-Reformation. Buffeted by critiques of the Last Judgment, which claimed that he valued art over religion, Michelangelo searched for new religious iconographies and techniques both publicly and privately. Fenichel here suggests a new and different understanding of the artist in his late career. In contrast to the received view of Michelangelo as solitary, intractable, and temperamental, she brings a more nuanced characterization of the artist. The late Michelangelo, Fenichel demonstrates, was a man interested in collaboration, penance, meditation, and experimentation, which enabled his transformation into a new type of religious artist for a new era.

‘… there is much to recommend about Michelangelo’s Art of Devotion in the Age of Reform. While her arguments sometimes could have been expanded, Fenichel succeeds throughout this engaging book in poignantly articulating Michelangelo’s artistic and religious self-doubts and the ways that he might have addressed such concerns via collaborative artistic practice and the fusion between religious meditation and artistic facture.’

Barnaby Nygren Source: Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme