A broadly based view of the artist’s career, principally as seen through the writings of his first and most articulate fan, Giorgio Vasari, whose Lives of the Artists remains the founding classic of Art History. We will consider a wide range of works ranging within the complete Michelangelo corpus, including sculpture, painting, and architecture. Along the way, we will read Vasari carefully and compare what we see with what he saw; we will also have occasion to talk about what it means to read words about pictures.
